


Thisness

by yarrie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Exasperated Best Friend!Hunk, Keith doesn't understand innuendo, Kitty Rose!Keith, Lance thinks a lot: the fic, M/M, Radio!Lance, Rebel!Keith, Slightly Sadistic Best Friend!Pidge, Slow Burn, Weird mixture of Angst and Comedy??, and then Flash Fry, because Lance, dirty humor, klance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2018-10-10
Packaged: 2018-10-29 06:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10848648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarrie/pseuds/yarrie
Summary: They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things.Lance had never seen it happen before, but that was just a fluke, a stroke of luck, a - a sign from the universe that he was meant for something, maybe, because in a tiny brick elementary school of 128 students, he'd been the only one sick at home the day that a fifth grader went up in flames and brought the whole school down with her.-----In which Lance just wants to live his life as a radio show host but the people around him keep dragging him into trouble. Also there's magic, and it keeps killing people.





	1. A Rose by any Other Name

They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things.

Lance had never seen it happen before, but that was just a fluke, a stroke of luck, a - a sign from the universe that he was meant for something, maybe, because in a tiny brick elementary school of 128 students, he'd been the only one sick at home the day that a fifth grader went up in flames and brought the whole school down with her.

People said, afterward, that no one could've known that it would happen. That it could've been anyone. That she hadn't done anything wrong. That there hadn't been any signs of magical affinity in her or her family, much less _fire_ affinity...until she exploded, anyway.

None of that sounded particularly reassuring when you lived five minutes away from a building that had been charred so horribly that the brick was scorched black and the windows were crystalline puddles on the ground. Lance remembered wandering over there once, just once, and getting the shit smacked out of his ass when his mama found out. But he'd had a reason for going. His neighbors had told him, soft and low like it was a secret to tuck into his pillow and sleep on, that somebody in town had been sneaking past the patrol and smuggling out handfuls of ashes for the families who'd lost somebody, and Lance had asked, soft and low because he was in _awe_ , who would do that, but nobody knew, because they went when it was dark and they went fast and they didn't tell no one but God. So Lance had gone looking, and he probably would've kept going if his mama hadn't caught him.

But aside from that one brave soul - and Lance - nobody in town would go near the place. A small colony of government workers migrated down for the summer to scrape charcoal and bone ash from the streets and rebuild the school, but it didn't do much good. Fear was a powerful thing.

In the meantime, Lance went to a school one hour away, and everyone even slightly related to him breathed a sigh of relief when he graduated from it before reconstruction was done.

They called it "sublimination," because there was always a nice way to describe terrible things - and if there wasn't, somebody could always be hired to find one.

And for the last five years, Lance had been that somebody.

* * *

Maybe that was overstating his importance, a little bit.

In reality, Lance was a tiny gear in a huge machine. In reality, he was sort of a nobody, even if he _was_ a nobody with a mouthpiece. In reality, his job could rightfully (if rudely) be summed up as propaganda-pushing.

And maybe in another reality, Lance would give a fuck about the ethics and morals of what he was doing. In this one, he didn't have any fucks left to give.

"Good mornin', Pasadena, how was your beauty sleep?" he crooned into his microphone, pulling his mouth into a smile because you fake it til you make it and he desperately wanted to make it. "This is Lance McClain speaking, here to remind you that the sky is blue, the earth is round, the stars are bright, and I'm free for dinner if you're lonely tonight, so _hit me up,_ ladies and gentleman."

On the TV in the corner of the recording studio, he saw Pidge dropping his head onto the desk with a muffled groan, so he pointed finger guns at his techie coworker half-ironically. Pidge could use a fake-it-til-you-make-it smile, he thought. Pidge could use any expression that wasn't exasperation or homicidal rage.

He kept the finger guns up until Pidge gave him the middle finger, then he gave Pidge two middle fingers back, and not once did he stop talking during the entire exchange. "Now then, tonight's topic is the total catastrophe with the protesters at the Gates of Justice yesterday! I mean, seriously guys, if you haven't been following the news you better turn on your TVs. It was a _madhouse_ , 'cause no better time to duke it out with security than when you're supposed to be protesting _peacefully,_ right?"

He made a very exaggerated huffing sound. "Now, I'm the first to defend freedom of speech and all that. I love freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is my best girl. It just seems...kinda dumb to get so riled up about it that you go around punching people, y'know? Words don't have feelings. Ideas don't have feelings. But people - people have _feelings_. People have _lots_ of feelings. Play nice while you're flaunting your freedom of speech, that's all I'm asking.

"But this isn't just about me, guys. Hit me with your opinions, 'cause I know everyone and their mother has one about this stuff - my facebook feed tells me so. As always, the number to call is 626-555-5567! We'd love to hear from you."

In the corner of his eye, he spied Pidge and Hunk fielding the first callers of the day before he was even finished reciting the number.

Well, that didn't take long.

Seconds later, names and descriptions were scrolling down his screen, and he picked one at random, because he was a brave, brave man, the kind of brave that was often mistaken for stupidity but was actually closer to stubbornness.

"Man, you're chomping at the bit today, Pasadena, aren't you? Mr. Adam Smith, how are you doing?"

 _"Good."_ Mr. Adam Smith's voice was soft, and raspy, and absolutely not radio-friendly, which could be blamed on either the inherent quality of his voice or the obvious lack of quality in his phone. There were cars in the background, which helped not at all.

Lance winced a little. Just this once, couldn't his first caller be somebody with a good microphone? Whatever. Rolling with the punches. "You rolling in traffic, sir?"

_"Not even rolling, unfortunately. But you know how it is."_

A sense of humor, he could work with this. "Man alive, I wish I _did_ know how it is. Maybe I'm lucky that this job forces me to wake up too early for rush hour, but I sure don't feel too lucky when my alarm sounds."

Mr. Smith uttered a dry, dry laugh.

Lance caught the annoyed undertone of that laugh and winced. It was an impersonal sort of annoyance, like Lance had simply nudged an underwater iceberg free and now it was floating to the surface of the sea and causing chaos in its wake. Impersonal, nothing to do with him, but that didn't mean it couldn't get ugly.

On paper, his job was actually pretty simple - all he had to do was talk, and piss the right people off, and not piss anybody else off. And Lance was good at talking, and _really_ good at pissing people off. He might be a little shaky on choosing who to piss off and who to let go, but he was getting better at it. And right now, his hard-won intuition was telling him to bail.

"Alright, alright, while we've got you captive in traffic, my good sir, what's your take on the protests?"

_"Well, actually, I think their hearts are in the right place. We all saw what happened in Kerberos, and given the...background...of the terrorists, you can see why people might think that there's something deeper going on."_

"Sure, sure. But the question is, do you think that there _is_  something deeper going on?"

_"I'm not ruling it out."_

"Of course not. There's no way to rule it out _,_ right? I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that _I_ know what actually happened. That way madness lies. But the problem is - there's no actual evidence that any of these conspiracies are true."

_"The tape - "_

"Yeah, the tape." Lance sighed. "Not gonna lie, I've listened to it, and I am un-im-pressed. I keep trying to hear the screaming that everybody's talking about, but all _I'm_  hearing is feedback. And this is from a guy who talks into a microphone all day for a living. Thanks for talkin' back, though - good luck with traffic!"

The man tried to call back a few minutes later. Wanted to finish the conversation, Pidge's curt notes told him.

Lance sighed and picked someone else.

It would be easy to string his haters along until they stumbled. They always would, sooner or later. Lance wouldn't consider himself the smartest or cleverest or meanest person in existence - he wasn't even the smartest or cleverest or meanest radio personality on his channel - but he was incredibly good at dragging people down to his level, and that was all he needed to do, most of the time. You couldn't win an argument on the radio with good reasoning alone. It was all in the delivery, and Lance was good at delivery.

It would be so, so easy to string his haters along, but he didn't like doing it. Didn't like shining a spotlight on people until they burned from the exposure. Didn't like humiliation. That kind of cruelty just wasn't in his blood, his bones, his too-soft heart. 

* * *

"Today _sucked_ ," he said with feeling, curled around one of Hunk's glorious cookie-cake masterpieces.

"Tough topic," Hunk nodded. "Tougher crowd."

Pidge snorted and nibbled on his piece of cookie-cake without commenting.

Lance groaned. "Yeah, yeah, I know. I was there."

Pidge snorted again. It was an ugly, harsh little sound, like a high-dose injection of condescension.

Lance was pretty sure Pidge didn't like him. Then again, Pidge didn't seem to like anyone. Except Hunk, but everyone liked Hunk.

* * *

That was not precisely true, he reflected later, as all three of them were berated in Iverson's dusty office for 'gross negligence of their duties.' Lance had tuned him out after he realized that this was about the same old stuff. Iverson was ex-military, and it was written all over the squareness of his shoulders and the straight line of his back and the way he expected his employees to respond well to beration. He gave off this overwhelming sense of what he called patriotic dignity and what everyone else saw as overcompensation.

Plus, he didn't like Hunk, and everyone liked Hunk.

"Dismissed," Iverson barked suddenly, and the only reason Lance even heard it was that he'd been listening for it.

"Freedom," he whispered to Hunk and Pidge. Hunk smiled weakly at him, looking a little nauseous.

Pidge, being Pidge, just snorted again. "You might wanna actually pay attention when he goes off on you. He wants to fire you, you know."

"Okay, first of all, he wasn't just going off on me, he was going off on _us_."

"Pretty much only you, though."

"I heard _Gunderson_ in there a couple of times."

Pidge scowled.

"And secondly, this is a government position. We're technically government employees. Nobody ever gets fired from the government. That's why Iverson's still here."

Hunk chuckled weakly, recovering a bit from his Iverson-induced panic.

Score.

Pidge opened and closed his mouth. "...you...okay. That's fair."

Score! Lance crossed his arms behind his neck and let his head rest there, soaking in his victory. "The worst thing that can happen is that I'll get promoted into a position where I can't do any more damage," he said conspiratorially.

"Oh how terrible for you," Pidge said, dry as sandpaper.

Lance grinned. "I know."

Hunk sighed and sighed, worry creasing his forehead, but it was a familiar worry that was no longer contagious, because he and Pidge were immune by now. "What do you want for dinner, Lance?"

"I was thinking burgers." Lance half-turned to Pidge. "You?"

Pidge blinked large owlish eyes at him. After a moment he realized why - ever since Pidge turned them down for dinner that first day, he hadn't asked. Maybe their lack of friendship wasn't entirely on Pidge.

"Pidge?" Hunk prodded gently.

"Oh," Pidge said, flushing ever so slightly. "Sorry. Not today, but...raincheck?"

"Sure, sure, Pidgeotto," Lance said cheerfully.

Pidge stared at him. "Was that supposed to be an insult? Pidgeotto's awesome."

"You're awesome," Lance fired back, on instinct, before he realized that yeah, that really wasn't an insult at all.

Pidge giggled, downright _giggled_. Behind him, Hunk threw him a thumbs up sign.

Lance groaned. "Let's pretend that didn't happen. You're Pidgey now."

"Too late," Pidge said.

"I canceled your evolution, you're _Pidgey_."

"Too late!" Pidge grabbed his bag and gave them a half-hearted backward wave. "Have a good dinner!"

"Thanks, see you tomorrow, Pidge," Hunk said.

Lance glared at Hunk.

"What?"

"Traitor."

"Pidge is cool, bro."

"Cooler than me?!"

"Lance, I love you, so I'm not answering that."

* * *

When he got home he put on the television. He always did, no matter how much shit the television was spewing about the state of the world. It was a horrible habit that he needed to kick, except it made him better at his job, while also making him better at hating his job.

Today the topic of choice was some gun-toting fool with the Remember Kerberos movement, which made him think about that stupid tape again, which made him listen to the stupid tape again, trying his damnedest to hear something in the background other than an increasingly sharp voice on the radio asking for someone, anyone to check in.

Some people listened to the static and heard screaming. Some people listened to the static and heard breathing.

Lance had been listening to this tape ever since it came out, and all he ever heard was static.

 _Wishing don't make a thing real,_ his mama always said.

* * *

The next day was more of the same. The protests up in Washington had escalated. Again. There was talk of tear-gassing and water hosing. Again.

Lance was already sick of it, but he did his best not to show it, because he was a fucking professional, and it wouldn't be very professional to ask his listeners why they felt the need to express their opinions on the radio instead of taking those opinions up with people who actually mattered and could get something done.

It was the sort of day that he spent more timewriting dramatic declarations of his imminent death to his techs than actually paying attention to his callers. He was, in fact, paying absolutely no attention to his callers at all, not even to pick which ones to pull. It barely mattered, on days like this. There was no greater proof of groupthink than the easy interchangeability of his audience members. 

"Mr. Tom Cain, what's your take on - "

"Madam Euphemia Lowe, how about you - "

"You're up next, Mrs. Efemena Ayodele - "

And so on, and so forth.

Until - "Annnnnd here's Mr. Kitty Rose, here to pitch in his two cents!" Then Lance paused for a long moment, successfully pulled out of his own headspace for the first time all day. "Um, please tell me that's not your real name. Actually, no, wait! Please tell me that it _is_ your real name, 'cause I _love it_."

"... _Hello?"_ came the voice from the phoneline - a nice voice, too, practically _made_ for radio - a voice that pushed Lance right back into his headspace, because he felt the irritating, irrational urge to actually be worthy of talking back. 

"Hiii," Lance said, with the kind of inflection that might accompany a teasing hand wiggle of a wave, "you're on air, just so you know."

" _I'm what?"_

Lance nearly cooed. "You're on air. You know. On the radio. On  _my_ radio station, as it happens. Which you should know already, seeing as you're the one who called. Do you need a breather? A little rewind? How about we do that. We can do that." He didn't wait for an answer. Cruelty might not be his MO, but neither was mercy. That's why people listened to him. It was fun to listen to an asshole who didn't cross the line except when he crossed the line twice. "My name's Lance McClain. I'm a radio show host. The Morning After show - which you are currently listening to and hopefully enjoying very much - is my magnum opus. It's also my unum opus, and hopefully primum opus - but enough about me. How are _you_ doing? How's your day been?"

 _"...I'm...I guess it's been good?"_ He didn't sound any less confused.

This time, Lance _did_ coo. "Just good? Not great? Not dazzling? Not awespectacular?"

 _"...just good,"_ Mr. Kitty Rose said, firmly. 

Lance grinned with wild abandon, because the setup was _way too perfect,_ and he probably shouldn't push a new caller like this but what the heck. Getting a caller named  _Kitty Rose_ was the best thing that had happened to him all day. "Awww, honey, that's no good." He dropped his voice to a low, suggestive pitch. "How about I make it a little better for you, hmmm?"

There was silence...then the sharp, unmistakable click of a phone hanging up.

Lance pouted, even though no one could see him. He'd always believed in the power of making faces to give his voice that extra emotional oomph. "Well, guess he didn't wanna stay and chat, ladies and gents. Next!"

* * *

Awkward-cute or not, Mr. Kitty Rose (seriously, was that his name?) slipped out of his mind completely within half a minute. He was too busy with his other callers, some of whom agreed with him, some of whom didn't, and some of whom _really_ didn't, but it was all in good fun - on Lance's side, anyways - and arguing was the best part of his job, so he wasn't exactly complaining.

So it was weird when Pidge came into the recording studio, afterward, and said with utmost casualness, "So. Mr. Kitty Rose?" like it was meaningful and shit.

"Dude, if that's actually his name..." Lance started laughing again.

Pidge grinned slightly - which was mindblowing to see on Pidge, King of Angry Scowly Faces - but it was a grin of the shit-eating variety. Lance braced himself, and good thing he did, because the next thing Pidge said was, "Didn't stop you from flirting with him. What, you aspiring to be Mr. Rose-Mclain?"

Lance laughed messily and ignored how his neck felt a little hot. He was never going to get used to the fact that batting for both teams was treated so casually here, but that didn't mean he didn't appreciate it. "No way, dude," he chirped out at last, "Mr. Mclain-Rose sounds _way_ better." 

Pidge gave him the sharpest little grin he'd ever seen on a human being, and mockingly saluted him on his way out.

"I think Pidge and I are becoming friends," he mused out loud as he and Hunk sat in a sleazy bar with two orders of burgers with cheesy fries for the third time in a week. Who needed healthy arteries, anyways?

"Pidge is cool, I told you," Hunk said, around a mouthful of fries.

"You think everyone is cool."

"Pidge is actually super cool, though. Did I tell you that he managed to install some kind of internet radio app on our computers? I didn't even think they were capable of running anything more intense than Wordpad."

"Hey," Lance said, pouting.

Hunk blinked at him. "What?"

"You listen to radio stations other than mine? I'm feelin' betrayed, Hunk! Abandoned! Gutted! Hung out to _dry!"_

"Dude," Hunk said, snorting with laughter, "we gotta listen to _something_ when there aren't any callers and we're waiting for commercials to pass."

 _"Hung out to dry,_ Hunk!"

* * *

Later at home, when his landline started ringing, Lance cursed wildly and had a battle of epic proportions with his remote to turn the TV off, because he knew who was calling and he knew what she would have to say about _watching the news again, mijo?_

"Hola, mama," he said, curling his tongue over the soft vowels of his native language.

"Hola, mi amor," his mother said warmly. "Two rings and you pick up, how punctual."

"I'm very punctual, mama," he protested, grinning. "I always do things exactly when I intend to do them."

"Does that mean that you haven't called me this week on purpose?" her voice turned gently chiding.

"Oooph, mama," he said, wincing a bit.

She laughed, forgiveness and love all in one bell-like sound. "I was listening to you the other day."

Oh shit. "Which day?" he asked, trying for lightness.

"The day you were talking about cereal," she said, and thank god, thank god, because he knew how sad she'd be if she'd been listening to the conversation that happened yesterday or the day before. Politics and laws were not up for discussion in the McClain household. His brothers and sisters would get fired up on their respective choices of social media, where his mama's sphere of influence did not extend, but Lance kept himself firmly, firmly out of those arguments, even when they tried to draw him in. Sometimes, when he came home for dinner and the table topic landed on how he was doing at work, he'd look up and his siblings would be looking at him plaintively, like they didn't understand how all the pieces that made up Lance McClain could possibly fit together into a cohesive whole. It sucked knowing that at least some of them were disappointed in him. It sucked, but he dealt with it, because he was disappointed in himself, too.

Small mercies, he reminded himself. Always be thankful for the small mercies, because you've already filled your quota for the big ones.

Things would get better, he thought, clenching his phone in his hand. Things had to get better.

* * *

Things did not get better.

He'd gone to work, spirits bolstered by his mother's warm, easy affection, and Iverson was waiting for him, and it was way too early for an Iverson lecture, fuck the universe. When it rains, it pours, he thought grimly.

"Look at this," Iverson said, thrusting a paper into his face.

Lance just barely managed to prevent himself from snapping back, "I _am_ looking at it, but you might want to take it back a couple inches if you want me to actually read it." Instead, he said, "Yes?"

"Look at this, and _read it!_ "

"Yes sir," Lance said cautiously, and that seemed to be what Iverson wanted, because he harrumphed irritably and stopped looming.

"This is your last warning to shape up," he said, because he only existed on a spectrum from upset to very upset. "You're not here because you're good at your job. You're here because the last man who had your job turned out to be a _thief._ Don't push it!"

Lance pulled the paper away and read it.

It was a fucking gag order.

When it rains, it pours, and pours, and pours.

* * *

"This sucks, man," Hunk murmured, looking over the stupid piece of paper with a critical eye.

"Yeah."

"I feel like - like we're doing everybody a disservice. This is basically self-censorship, right?"

Lance sighed. "Yeah. Yeah, but - hey, it's not like a random radio talk show in Pasadena is going to change the course of history."

Hunk frowned and looked sad.

Lance winced. "Look, I don't like it - but I don't wanna know what they do to me if I break rank, either."

Hunk chewed his lip. "You have to be careful, Lance. Maybe, this year - maybe you should try to get transferred to the tech side."

"The dark side, you mean?" Lance waggled his eyebrows.

"...we _do_ have cookies."

Lance laughed. "Hunk, you already make me cookies all the time."

Hunk looked properly pensive. "If I stopped doing that, would you turn techie for the cookies?"

"Hunk, my man, I'd die without them. You don't want me to die, do you?"

"No, I really, really want you to stay alive," Hunk said, and wow, okay, this conversation was becoming Way Too Serious.

Pidge piped up, making them both jump, "I didn't know you could do any tech stuff. Aren't you always saying that you and computers have a mutually assured destruction thing going on?"

"Pidge, Pidge, Pidge," Lance wagged his finger at him, "I was a technician here before Hunk was."

"I mean, he wasn't a very good one, but - "

"Hush, Hunk, I'm trying to make a point."

Pidge snickered. "Consider your point unmade. And probably unmakeable."

"I'm feeling so attacked right now," Lance muttered.

"Good," Pidge said, and there was a grin on the little guy's face, and Lance felt weirdly better.

Then Hunk sighed and ran his hand through his hair, ending the moment. "We need a game plan. Pidge and I, maybe we need to screen the callers more? Make sure they're not gonna be trouble?"

"I don't mind trouble," Lance said, "s'long as they don't mention anything on the unmentionable list."

"It's gonna be hard finding someone who won't mention Kerberos or protests or anti-magic regs." Pidge wrinkled his nose.

"Give me an hour of Kitty Roses, then," Lance said, sighing.

Pidge snorted. "You sure you want that kind of trainwreck on your hands?"

Lance looked at Pidge, stern-faced and serene. "Bring it."

* * *

He should not have said that.

He should not have said _anything_.

Pidge was going to be insufferable.

Scratch that, Pidge was already insufferable: next to the little label with Kitty Rose's name, Pidge's note read, _Ask and ye shall receive!_ With the next refresh, it also said, _BTW I told him you were gonna answer his call, so if you don't, I guess he's just gonna think that you're a coward._

Pidge was going to _suffer_.

"So," he said, as sweetly as he could while simultaneously imagining a painful, humiliating death for his traitorous technician, "Mr. Kitty Rose, back again?"

 _"Hi,"_ the other man said. _"...I guess I am."_

"You definitely are, my man. Do you actually have anything to say this time, or...?"

There was a pause. _"Wow, you're kind of a jerk. Why do people take time out of their day to listen to you?"_

"Heyyyy. I'm just gonna point out that you're calling in for the second time, which means that at the very least you've listened to me _twice_."

_"And both times were a waste of my time."_

Pidge was going down. Pidge was _so_ going down. Lance leaned in and uttered in the cheesiest cartoon-villainiest voice he could manage, "How dare you."

_"How dare I, indeed."_

"Yeah, exactly. How dare you listen to my step by step instructions and call me."

_"It's almost as though you don't want listeners."_

"What, are you a _listener_ now, Mr. Both-Times-Were-A-Waste-Of-My-Time?"

_"You know that feeling you get when you pass a car accident on the road and you want to slow down to see what's going on?"_

"Yeah?"

_"Your radio show is the verbal equivalent."_

Lance found himself laughing, hysterically, helplessly. Okay, so maybe Pidge didn't have to go down. "Seriously, man, did you call in just to tell me that I'm a jerk?"

_"That's my story and I'm sticking with it."_

"You don't have any pearlier pearls of wisdom? That's all you've got for me?"

_"...okay, I got another one: cereal, then milk, is the only acceptable order to make cereal in."_

Lance gasped. "You _heathen._ "

_"But I'm right."_

"I'll have you know that I'm a cereal expert, buddy, and milk is always first."

_"I bet all your cereal bowls are mushy at the bottom and dry at the top."_

"You take that back, my cereal bowls are _perfect,_ thank you, because I know how to treat my dates right."

_"That sounds awfully pathetic."_

"Why, why I oughta, _you're_ pathetic!"

_"What a comeback. I'm quivering in my boots."_

"You should be!"

_"Yes, yes. That doesn't change the fact that you're wrong."_

"How could you possibly put milk over the cereal? You're just making it soggy faster!"

_"It's too messy pouring cereal onto milk. Gets everywhere."_

Lance narrowed his eyes. "I'll have you know that cereal is my second favorite thing to eat in bed, and unlike the first thing, I've never made a mess in my sheets with it!"

There was silence. Then, very quietly, _"Um, what's your first favorite thing then?"_

Oh. Oh my god. Oh my _god_.

He _didn't get it._

This was the best day of Lance's _life._

With a huge shit-eating grin, he settled down on his elbows and sing-songed, "Nothing, nothing at alllll. Hey, by the way, I'm thinking of having a cereal party soon, wanna come?"

_"Uh, no, not if you're going to eat it wrong."_

The best. Day. Of his life.

"Hey, man, if it matters to you _that_ much, we can try it both ways." Lance wiggled his eyebrows. "I can bring the milk if you bring everything else."

_"Er, no, I'm not drinking your milk."_

Hook.

"Why? Don't you trusssst me?"

Line.

_"No. Plus, I'm lactose intolerant, so double no."_

And sinker.

"Oh, Kitty," Lance purred, "nobody's making you swallow."

* * *

Lance was floating on Cloud Nine, and counting, the rest of the day. He'd never been more disappointed to cut a caller short so that he could start music hour. Or more disappointed, in general. He'd already eaten four of Hunk's cookies to chase the high of that incredible call, and now he was eyeing the plate for his fifth.

Next to him, Hunk was shaking his head, the flush of secondhand embarrassment fading at last. "Dude. _Dude._ Did you have to?"

"Dude. It was necessary."

"So necessary," Pidge agreed.

Lance turned to Hunk. "See? Pidge agrees with me! And Pidge never agrees with me."

"Never," Pidge agreed.

Hunk sighed at both of them. "I guess we did a good job today, though."

"Good? Good? Hunk, my man, my bestie, my homie, that was more than just _good_. It was amazing, it was incredible, it was - it was - "

"Awespectacular?" Pidge suggested, rolling his eyes.

Lance pointed to Pidge emphatically. "YES."

Hunk looked resigned to his fate. "Right. That. Anyways, good job. I don't think anybody noticed that we didn't talk about the unmentionables."

"Thank you, Kitty Rose, savior of us all," Pidge said.

"Hey. _I'm_ the savior here. Kitty Rose is, like, the DVD Disc 1 villain who helps out during the final battle against the actual villain."

"So he's...not a villain at all," Pidge said.

"Well - "

"And also probably the most important person during the final battle."

"I - "

"So basically the savior."

Lance screeched. "Okay, whatever. What-ever. And here I was, wanting to invite you to our bro dinners, but I _guess you don't wanna go_ \- "

Pidge sucked on his soft drink. "Nope."

Hunk frowned. "Awww...."

Pidge flicked his eyes over to Hunk and heaved a sigh. "Yeah, sorry. Still need a raincheck."

"When's the end of your shift today?" Hunk asked.

"6 pm."

Lance wiggled his eyebrows. "And you don't have time to grab dinner with us? Does someone have a hoooot daaaaate?"

"Oh my god, Lance," Pidge muttered, smacking his head.

"That's not a no, Pidge!"

"I take it back, no raincheck."

* * *

Pidge, because he was a boring, boring person, turned out to be headed for the library at Caltech after his shift.

Lance, because he liked poking boring people until they lost their boringness, and because he still felt a little guilty about making Pidge the third wheel to his and Hunk's awesome bro relationship, tugged on Hunk's sleeve until Hunk agreed that they should accompany Pidge to the library _because you know it's not a great idea to be walking around alone at night, Hunk!_

"It's surprisingly quiet around here," Hunk said, warily, twisting his head this way and that, and Lance almost felt bad for appealing to his best friend's protective/paranoid instincts.

"Were you expecting it to be loud?" Pidge asked, raising an eyebrow. "This isn't exactly party central."

"Well, no, but I'm surprised you don't have protesters camping out anywhere."

Pidge snorted. "There were, for a while."

Lance raised an eyebrow. "What happened? Mace? Batons? Dogs?"

"Deadlines and exams," Pidge said flatly.

Hunk cracked a small, wry grin, while Lance outright laughed. "Oh, jesus. You serious?"

"Yep. There were _We Will Never Stop Looking_ signs abandoned all over the courtyard as soon as Hell Week started."

"Ironic."

Pidge smiled at that, but it wasn't really a smile-smile, and it didn't even reach all corners of his mouth, much less his eyes. "Yeah. There are definitely better places to start a revolution than a school of engineers. Not enough of them care, and the ones who do care don't care enough." Was that bitterness? It sounded like bitterness. But maybe Lance was hearing things. It wasn't like Pidge to be bitter - or maybe it was, and they just didn't know Pidge well enough to know that.

"Maybe they have the right idea," Lance said cautiously.

Pidge looked really hard at him. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't think most people are cut out for revolution."

Pidge looked even harder at him. "For such a loud, bossy guy, you're actually really cynical," he said finally.

Lance grinned at him. "Hey, gotta hope for the best but expect the worst, right?"

Pidge shrugged, quiet and blank-faced. He wasn't glaring at Lance, but he wasn't agreeing with him, either. Which was normal. Everybody in the information business talked big game about the moral imperative to inform the masses and change the world and shit, but it wasn't human nature to walk the walk unless you were already headed in that direction.

Lance was a coward, he'd be the first to admit it - but at least he wasn't a hypocrite.

Unbidden, the image of the wreckage at Kerberos Station popped into his head. He winced.

At least he wasn't dead.

* * *

Kitty Rose showed up the next day, too.

They had to table the cereal debate, though, because Kitty dropped a bombshell about not being able to cook, which derailed them for a solid fifteen minutes.

He also found out that Kitty liked running and kicking balls around but didn't like team sports because of the _team_ part, and that his favorite color was the same red as canned cranberry sauce, and that he thought pineapple on pizza was disgusting, which was so, so wrong that Lance was _compelled_ to inform him, " _You're_ disgusting!" before hanging up.

Then Hunk and Pidge completely and utterly betrayed him by sending forward an endless line of callers who agreed with Kitty on the pineapple issue, and he vowed not to speak to them ever again.

* * *

Kitty Rose also, apparently, thought that Raisin Bran counted as a cereal.

Lance curtly informed him that this lost him the cereal debate by default.

He also, reluctantly, began speaking to Hunk and Pidge again, seeing as his silence didn't have a lot of emotional impact when the alternative was engaging in interpretative dance moves to get his message across.

Also, Hunk gave him more cookies, and those cookies made up for all kinds of shenanigans.

* * *

Two weeks after the gag order had been thrust upon him, Lance took inventory of how he was doing and thought that, all things considered, it could've been worse. Iverson was still yelling at him regularly but it was with his usual, baseline hostility. Pidge still wouldn't come to dinner with him and Hunk, but at least the awkwardness of their duo becoming a trio had mostly rubbed off. And Kitty was, weirdly, becoming something of a friend? Lance had no idea what was going on there, only that Hunk and Pidge thought that _something_ was, and they kept making these _faces_ whenever Kitty called and it was actually super embarrassing. And his mama was still checking on him and his siblings were still weird about his job and the McClain house was still a no-politics zone.

So life was - not good, but okay. Really, really okay.

Or, at least, that's what Lance had _thought_.

It turned out that there was a difference between thinking that things were settling down, and the actual process of things settling down. A small part of Lance's brain had solidified in early childhood and never really changed after that, and it was this part of his mind that fooled him into thinking that turning his eyes away from the world shifting on its axis would somehow make it stop.

So he was just doing his usual bedtime routine, his brushing and flossing and face mask and shampoo and conditioner, when the television noises in the background stopped sounding like weather report noises and started sounding like news report noises. It wasn't a big difference, but he felt it like a cold front crashing down, chilling him to the bone. Some animal instinct told him to _pay attention, pay attention_ so he did, plodding slowly to the living room and sinking into the couch of his living room, staring glassily at the television screen.

_" - currently receiving reports of a flash flood in Washington D.C., right at doorstep of the White House. At least forty civilians, many of them protesting the recent changes in the Magical User Registration Act, were caught in the flood - "_

_"Authorities suspect that the flood was caused by an act of magi-terrorism or a sublimination event...witnesses say that there was a white light before water came rushing from the steps of the White House. No suspects have been - "_

_"This just in, the flood has started rising again, still not a cloud in the sky - "_

_" - massive explosion at the White House. Authorities say that its blast radius was dampened significantly by the flood - "_

_" - White House Correspondent, on the line now - the prevailing theory we've heard tonight is that whoever raised the flood knew about the bomb, what are your thoughts?"_

_"These horrific events are the doings of terrorists - and I do not use that word lightly - aligned with the magi-militant group Remember Kerberos. We all know there is a time for tolerance, a time for patience, but we have been tolerant - we have been patient. There is also a time for action, and that time is now. I call upon every member of this group to surrender to the nearest authorities - "_

* * *

It also turned out that both he and Pidge were a little wrong about engineers, because Caltech was on _fire_ the next morning. Metaphorically.

They weren't the only ones, either - the news was full of footage from nearly every major city in the country. Pasadena fared better than most, but there were still riots happening, honest to god riots. Half of lanes on the highway were blocked off because someone had moved the road partitions. There was broken glass everywhere around the 7-11 across the street from the studio. Lance actively feared for his car's structural integrity if he parked it any lower than the roof of the garage. By then, he was almost forty minutes late. 

Hunk called him while he was running up the stairs, saying, "Dude, I packed you an extra sleeping bag. Have you seen the streets? We might not be going home tonight."

"Fuck," Lance said, blearily. "That's a good idea, thanks, I'm at the studio - "

"How is it over there? I'm gonna be late, tell me how it is - "

"It's..." Lance looked around, and was nearly run over by a frantic pair of white heels. By the time he managed to find a safe spot, he laughed weakly. "It's - there are papers everywhere. All over the hallway. Like - like new carpeting, hey?"

"I'm not asking about the state of our _paperwork_. Jesus, Lance."

"Well - " Lance floundered for words. "If you're asking about _me_ , I almost got stepped on by Cassidy from Audio like two minutes ago."

"Cassidy from Audio is half your size and maybe a third of your weight." But Hunk sounded like he was smiling now, which was the important part. 

"Don't underestimate her, she's like a human pitbull." As if on cue, he saw another woman barrel straight into her. They landed in a heap, and rolled out of it just as quickly before scuttling over each other and off in opposite directions. There were indentations from their heels on the sea of paperwork. Lance winced. "A pitbull on stilts," he amended. 

"Fascinating," Hunk said dryly. "But what about, say...structural damage. Or police. Or protesters. Or rioting. Or traffic."

"Nothing like that," Lance said slowly. "At least, not the last time I checked."

With the thinnest affectation of patience, Hunk asked, "And when was that?"

"Alright, alright, fine, point taken." He peered out the nearest window. And stared. And stared. And stared. Then, without moving his gaze one centimeter, he whispered, "Hunk?"

"Lance? You okay?"

"Yeah...yeah, I'm okay. Listen. I still have a change of clothes at your place, right?"

"Multiple changes of clothes, actually." Hunk, bless him, was still so Hunk through this mess.

"Can you bring them over? I think maybe the studio's safer than our apartments right now. Kind of. Maybe?"

"What do you mean? What's going on?"

"There's, like, twenty soldiers right outside the door."

"Is that..." Hunk said cautiously, "a good thing?"

"I don't know, man." Lance laughed, only a little hysterically, "I don't know anything anymore."

* * *

"Good morning, Pasadena," he said, a pale imitation of his usual cheer, "how was your beauty sleep?"

The words felt like cotton in his mouth.

He didn't ask for callers - no techs meant nobody to screen the callers, so it would've been a lost cause anyways. It was still depressing to look at the empty tech room and watch the phones flash, ringing into the void. He had the ridiculous thought that he should keep watching, regardless, because what if Pidge called in? What if Kitty did? Surely he'd know that it was them, even without sound, without anything but the telegraphed trill of an impersonal ringtone.

The studio felt deathly still, now. The other people in the building had been leaving - he tried not to think _evacuating_ \- one by one all morning until it was just him. He hadn't even seen Iverson all day, and this was probably the only day of his life that he'd feel happy catching a glimpse of the old grump. But no one was there, so Lance stayed huddled in the recording studio talking about nothing at all, because his phone was on its last percentage point of battery, and he didn't know if Hunk would be able to find him if he left the station, and he really, really didn't want to be alone.

Halfway past nine, Hunk finally showed up with their sleeping bags and bottles of water and a generous snack stash, and Lance could have cried, he was so glad to see him.

"Where's Pidge?" they both asked, at the same time. Then they looked at each other, and looked at Pidge's empty chair, and Hunk made this...noise of distress that sounded like hope itself dying.

Lance patted his back. It didn't seem to calm Hunk down a whole lot, but at least it made Lance feel like he was doing something.

"Okay," Hunk said finally, patting him back in an odd feedback loop of reassurance. He rubbed his face. "O-kay. I think Pidge can take care of himself. So...let's take care of ourselves, first. Then we'll worry about...like, everything else."

Half an hour later, properly fed and watered and hugged within an inch of his life, Lance started taking callers.

Pidge wasn't one of them. Neither was Kitty.

He tried his best not to think about that.

* * *

 

The smoke alarm went off at 4 am and woke them up. Hunk couldn't find a way to shut it off completely, but he did manage to dismantle the one in the recording studio, and they were both tired enough to go back to sleep in spite of the distant ringing. By the time they woke up again, it was all quiet. The street outside didn't look any different from yesterday, which was comforting because it meant nothing big happened and not-so-comforting because no one had come to clean up the 7-11 and the glimmer of glass on the ground was like something out of a horror movie. 

"Okay," Hunk said after they ate a dry breakfast of granola bars, "Let's regroup."

"Hunk, buddy," Lance said, wincing, "two people does not a group make."

Hunk ignored him. "A, things are kinda going crazy out there."

"Yep." Lance resisted the urge to put his hand on his forehead. No facial cleansing routine meant he had to be extra careful -

"B, Pidge is missing."

"Yep." Lance put his hand on his forehead.

"C, Your radio boyfriend is also missing."

"Why is that C? That should be, like, X or something." He paused. Then, frantically, he added, "Also he's not my boyfriend, what the hell Hunk - "

"D," Hunk continued serenely, "I'm pretty sure Pidge knows him. Like, actually knows him."

Lance shut his mouth and stared.

Hunk huffed a bit. "C'mon, man. You said it yourself, Kitty Rose just can't be his real name. But he hasn't corrected you either, right?"

"No," he said slowly.

"Well," Hunk shrugged. "Pidge is the one who screened him. And, um, while we're at it?"

Lance made a go-on gesture.

"It seems way too coincidental that Pidge - like pigeon - and Kitty are both _animal names_ , right?"

Lance stared at him. "Oh my god. Why did I not see that before??"

Hunk, ever humble, shrugged. "So it just makes sense that they actually know each other - but also, um. I tried to find Kitty Rose in the logs, and there's nothing. No phone numbers, no call records, just...nothing."

"Pidge?"

"Pidge. Probably." Hunk scratched his nose.

Lance nearly screeched. "Pidgeeeee. Whyyyyy."

"Don't worry, don't worry!" Hunk grinned at him, and held up a fifth finger. "E, I bet they're still listening to you."


	2. Where there's smoke, there's fire

The plan was simple, so simple that it wasn't really a plan. Assuming that Hunk was right, Lance just had to keep doing what he was doing - asking for callers, and promising them privacy and anonymity if they didn't want to be on air. And hopefully, if Pidge - or Kitty - was paying attention, they'd check in at some point.

It had been a day and a half since Lance and Hunk had taken up residence at the station, and there hadn't been a peep from either of them. Lance was  _worried_. And when he was worried, he talked. And when he talked, he got tired of talking.

And when he got tired of talking, he put some music on the airwaves and listened to the other channels, picking out voices he recognized. Some stations had the same people talking hour after hour after hour, so clearly he wasn't the only radio host who had gotten stranded - or, more accurately, who had stranded himself. Half of Pasadena seemed to be barricaded, now, after a few well-placed explosions broke the water main supplying most of downtown, flooding large swaths of the city. Los Angeles proper had also been hit pretty hard. And Caltech was no longer just metaphorically on fire - someone had rigged a few of the windows around campus with nitro bombs, and while the explosions had been fairly minor, the students were in an uproar, which catapulted a lot of former fence-sitters into an uproar too.

Lance had no idea who was actually rioting at this point, or why. It seemed to be a combination of angry magical rights activists, angry anti-magical rights activists, and angry civilians who couldn't care less about magical rights. The city had hit a threshold of some kind; the chaos was sustaining itself now.

It was upsetting - irrationally so - to think about how meaningless the riots were. It would have been one thing if this latest clusterfuck had been the first sign that something was rotten in the White House, but that wasn't the case. It wasn't even the tenth. Or the twentieth.

Where had these people been, when a literal madman took the seat of presidency and his daughter went on a witchhunt of every fire user that was even close to hitting Omega? Where had all these people been, when the Kerberos Station disaster became the perfect excuse to start stripping away at magical rights, instead of a simple meaningless tragedy? Where had these people been, when the Garrison put Sam Holt in a cell and tortured him for answers that he probably wanted to know more than they did?

Where had these people been, back when they could have done something good with their anger?

It was so stupid to start fighting now. They should've been fighting all along.

Lance closed his eyes and laid his cheek on the table.

It was so stupid.

 _People_  were so stupid.

* * *

Pasadena, as it turned out, agreed with him. He'd never had such a positive response to any of his rants before - maybe because he was too tired and frazzled to be Lance McClain, the radio personality, and what was coming out on the airwaves was more like Lance McClain, the frustrated man with a microphrone.

It made him feel a little better. He wasn't sure it was supposed to, but it did.

* * *

When their stash of snacks started running low, he and Hunk went to take a look at the 7-11 - against Hunk's fervent wishes. Lance had been hoping that the store would look better on the inside. It didn't. He had also been hoping that there would be something on the shelves and somebody to sell it to them. There wasn't.

All they really accomplished was waking up the woman who was sleeping under the counter, who then took a swing at them with a baseball bat, which startled Lance so badly that he fell on Hunk, who fell against a shelf, which fell against the next shelf, which thankfully didn't hit anything else as it went down.

So, yeah...it was a failed trip on multiple fronts.

From his spot on the floor, Lance groaned quietly and squinted through the dust. "Please tell me she's not hot," he mumbled. "The only way this could be more embarrassing is if she's hot."

Hunk looked skyward, defeatedly. "You just made it more embarrassing by opening your mouth."

"Ex- _cuse_  me - " He sat up and looked at the woman, who was glaring at them with incredible hostility. She was an impressive thing, with glittering eyes and cheekbones that could probably cut steel. Not pretty, not beautiful, but it almost didn't matter. "...shit."

Hunk groaned. "What? Oh. Oh no. Please don't say it - "

"She's hot," Lance said, out of the corner of his mouth.

"Lance," Hunk hissed, turning nearly purple.

"Annnnnd also really pissed at us?" Lance sat up and raised his voice so that she could hear. "Hey! Name's Lance, Lance McClain. What's yours?"

She stared at them. "You," she said, in lieu of answering, " _must_  be kidding me." Her voice was harsh with disgust - disproportionately harsh, actually, in Lance's humble opinion.

Lance frowned. "Um...sorry?"

She made a scoffing sound, nearly silent and very loud at the same time.

"Please ignore my friend," Hunk said.

"Hey," Lance said.

"I will," she said, unmollified.

" _Hey_ ," Lance said.

"Were you actually  _sleeping_  over there?" Hunk asked, peering around Lance's body at the dirty counter, clearly appalled but doing his best not to sound appalled.

"Yes," she said.

"Oh my god," Lance said, forgetting the insult to himself immediately. "That's terrible."

She smiled at him.

And -

And it was the single most uncomfortable thing he'd ever experienced in his life. A chill ran down his back like a prickle of literal pain in his spine, the manifestation of something animal in him. He smiled back still, because it was a social reflex, but the expression felt tight on his face.

It wasn't that he was afraid. He hadn't been afraid for himself for a very long time, not since he realized that he'd been living on the goodwill of an invisible hand since the tender age of eight. If his luck ran out now, well, so be it. But he was still perfectly capable of feeling afraid for other people, and there was just...something about her that didn't sit well with him.

But whatever it was, Hunk didn't seem to pick up on it, because he was still chattering away with her - or, at least, chattering in her general direction.

Apparently, she didn't live too far, just far enough that she didn't want to walk home, so they gave her a ride and she gave them a case of Mexican Coke that had been tucked away under the counter with her. Lance hadn't even realized that they sold Mexican Coke at 7-11, but he told her, approvingly, that she'd chosen her priorities well. Hunk just shook his head and asked if she'd had anything  _other_  than Coke to consume. The woman simply stared at Hunk, as if the question was so foolish she wasn't going to bother saying anything. She didn't even look at Lance.

Hunk, being Hunk, spent the rest of the car ride gently monologuing in her general direction about the importance of nutrition. By the time they dropped her off at a residential gate, her eyes were like cool marble.

"I don't think she liked me," Hunk said, mournfully, after she shut the car door crisply and walked away.

"Everybody likes you," Lance said absently.

"That is incredibly untrue," Hunk said, slowing down for a yellow light because that was the kind of person Hunk was.

"Everybody likes you, except the people who don't like anyone," Lance amended.

"A lot of people don't like me, actually," Hunk said, but he was grinning a little bit. "I'm not  _that_  loveable."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh, sure...you aren't  _that_  loveable, and water isn't  _that_  wet."

"Well," Hunk said, "actually, if you define wetness as - "

"Hunk,  _no_ , bad Hunk, no sciencing your way out of this - "

"If you define wetness as the tendency to cling to other substances, water is actually not that wet, because it has way more cohesive forces than most solvents - "

"Oh my god, Hunk, I am literally the  _last_  person you should be lecturing about water."

There was a beat of silence.

"You are?" Hunk finally said, uncharacteristically careful in the way he shaped his mouth around the words.

Which made Lance realize, belatedly, exactly what he'd said, and how it could be interpreted. Weakly, he stammered, "Um, umm,  _ummmmm,_ " and tried not to panic to death.

Hunk whipped the car into the parking lot of a shopping square, and as soon as they were safely parked, he turned around to grasp Lance by the shoulders. "You  _are?_ " he repeated, like he knew the answer but wanted to make sure Lance wanted him to know.

Lance, as it happened, did not want him to know. Trust Hunk to be oblivious for years and years and years, and then suddenly understand  _everything_  from one snarky throwaway line. "Oh, man," he groaned, "I did  _not_  mean it like that, I swear, jesus, can we, like, pretend that I didn't say anything - "

And then, like a gentle tug from reality, or a camera lens going out of focus, the whole scene blurred away in the blink of an eye, and he lifted his eyelids to find them back at the red light.

Hunk was saying, "A lot of people don't like me, actually. I'm not  _that_  loveable."

Lance stared straight ahead, blinking away his lingering disorientation.

"Lance?" Hunk frowned at him, a hint of concern in his warm, honest gaze.

"I'll believe it when I see it, buddy," he said, dredging up a dazzling smile for his best friend.

Hunk rolled his eyes.

Lance just laughed, and turned on the radio so that the dulcet tones of Missus Nyma on channel 102.4 could drown out the echoes of the terrible conversation that had almost happened.

It had been a long time since he'd had such a close call. A really, really long time.

* * *

With experience from two or three past riot seasons under his belt, Lance had gotten exceptionally good at finding businesses that were open in spite of the raging shitstorm running its course on the streets. There was, for instance, a nearby Wal-mart run by a particularly fearless (and heartless) member of middle management, and next to that, a laundromat owned by a stern-faced Nigerian couple, and next to  _that_ , a fitness center whose janitor was entirely unimpressed by gunfire and magefire alike. So, as far as basic necessities went, he and Hunk were doing alright.

Hunk, bless him, had also gotten access to the building's wifi, so now they spent their evenings scrolling through the news instead of talking until they were sick of being awake. Or, rather, Lance scrolled through the news, while Hunk did a thing that was less like scrolling and more like shotgunning.

Naturally, the moment Lance stepped into their makeshift home base with their freshly laundered sleeping bags, he was greeted by Hunk thrusting a laptop in his face. "Huffington Post is convinced that there wasn't ever a bomb at the White House," he said, indignantly.

"Nice goin', Huffington Post," Lance said, dropping the laundry onto the floor and squinting at the computer screen. "...What bomb?"

Hunk gaped at him and practically hyperventilated. "What bomb?  _What bomb?"_

Lance blinked at him. "Hunk, buddy, you okay?"

"No," Hunk sputtered. "No. Not okay. Like, for real, not okay."

"Oh." Lance cocked his eyebrow. "Alrighty then." He dropped next to the sleeping bags and started to fluff them.

Hunk threw his hands up. "How do you not remember the bomb?"

Lance blinked at him. "Uh," he said intelligently.

"Explosion at the White House? Flash floods? Any of this ringing a bell?"

"Oh,  _that_  bomb," Lance said.

Hunk levelled him a deeply unimpressed look that punctured his fucking soul. "Yes, Lance," he said, " _that_  bomb."

"Ow," he said, wincing slightly. "Your disappointment is, like, a weapon of mass destruction, dude."

"Good," Hunk said huffily, which made Lance feel incredibly guilty for absolutely no reason. Hunk had that effect on people.

After a long, expectant silence, he prodded, "So...the Huffington Post?"

"Is full of  _stupid stupidheads!"_  Hunk said, even more huffily.

Lance patted him on the shoulder sympathetically. "It's okay."

"It's really not," Hunk said, but he leaned against Lance and continued to grumble at a much lower volume.

It took everything Lance had not to laugh, because he knew - he just  _knew_  - that Hunk wouldn't take it the way he meant it.

The problem with Hunk was that he expected things out of people, and the problem with people was that they never quite measured up to his expectations. Lance himself made a regular habit of disappointing him, just so that Hunk would lower his expectations to meet reality. He called it Operation Let Him Down Gently in his head, though in practice it was more like Operation Try Your Best to Let Him Down Gently because it had only been about 50% successful so far. Hunk was just too good for his own good.

Lance probably didn't deserve him as a best friend.

From where he was slouching on Lance's ribs, Hunk shook the phone and demanded plaintively, "Why are you so wrong? How can you be so wrong? How can anyone be so wrong?" only to look even more disappointed when Lance was unable to stop a quiet snicker from escaping.

Who was he kidding - he  _definitely_  didn't deserve his best friend.

And because he didn't deserve his best friend, it made him feel better to think that probably nobody did.

* * *

"You know, Pasadena, I struck out with a lady the other day - not that I'm ashamed to admit it, the difference between a lady's man and a common man is that the lady's man has been rejected more times than the common man has even tried. Not that I tried especially hard this time - she was a lil bit on the scary side. But I like 'em that way, because I live life on the edge, my friends. Anyways, I hit on this lady, and it didn't go too well, but you know how I felt afterwards? Relieved. It was like a little slice of normality. Things have been so crazy recently that I've almost forgotten how it feels to be a regular human being with regular human problems. As it turns out, I really  _like_  having regular human problems...the only people who complain that their shoes aren't shiny enough are the people who can afford shoes, you feel me? And most of us  _can_  afford shoes, so let's complain about petty things for a change. All this political intrigue isn't good for my soul, and it's absolutely terrible for my skin. If you're listening, mom, feel free to say  _I told you so_."

* * *

On Sunday, he and Hunk drove to his apartment because it was the closer of the two. He called his mama, who did not in fact tell him  _I told you so_ , and Hunk called his family, and they both took nice long showers because the showers at the fitness center definitely had some kind of timer that stopped the hot water as soon as you got comfortable.

Hunk somehow found enough flour to stress-bake four batches of cookies, and that was what they ate as they sat on the floor of the kitchen and recovered from hunkering down in a radio station for almost a week.

"I'm worried," Hunk said.

"You're always worried," Lance said, "but yeah, I'm worried too."

"It's been four days," Hunk mumbled. "Four days! It's not like I don't think they can take care of themselves, but..."

"Yeah," Lance said. "I know."

"I don't know why I'm so worried," Hunk said, despairingly.

"Dude," Lance said, "you're always worried. That's why you're worried."

Hunk frowned at him. "You're worried too! And you're  _never_  worried."

"Yep," Lance said, popping the p.

"Laaaance," Hunk groaned, throwing his arms up, "you're not helping!"

"Excuse you, I am the  _most_  helpful," Lance said. "You told me to get all the callers. I am getting all the callers."

Hunk huffed at him and ate another cookie.

"Maybe," Lance said, carefully, "this isn't working."

"No," Hunk said, "it's definitely not working."

They sat together in pensive silence for a moment. In the background, a reporter was snapping out quick updates on 'the situation at the White House.' Lance had no idea what 'situation' was being discussed, but he figured that if it were serious, they'd be using a more precise word. 'Situation' was a rhetorical trick. It was what the media called anything that didn't sound dramatic enough on its own.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Hunk said. "You got really quiet."

"I can do quiet," Lance protested.

Hunk gave him the  _don't bs me_  look he'd perfected after ten years of friendship.

"I  _can_  do quiet," Lance said, choosing to misinterpret the look rather than ignore it.

"Not saying you can't, buddy," Hunk said. "Just saying that you're never quiet for  _no reason_."

Lance huffed and crossed his arms. "I was listening to the news," he said.

Hunk tilted his head and listened for a while, before nodding understandingly. "Yeah, it's a total mess."

"Yeah," Lance echoed.

Hunk looked at him critically. "You don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about," he said, not really a guess or a question but rather a statement of fact.

"Nope," Lance said cheerfully.

Hunk sighed a long-suffering but affectionate sigh. "Okay, well, I guess you haven't had the time to trawl for news on the internet recently." He chewed and swallowed a chunk of cookie. "The president was supposed to give a speech the other day - something about the riots and patriotism and making a united stand, I bet."

"Supposed to?" Lance dropped his chin into his palm, striking a contemplative pose.

"Yeah. They stopped broadcasting after showing footage of an empty room for two minutes."

Lance stared at him. "That's not foreboding  _at all_."

"I know, right? Anyways, nobody's heard anything from the White House since."

"Not. Foreboding. At all." Lance sucked his cheeks in and out a few times in contemplation. "That's why they're calling it a  _situation,_ " he realized out loud.

Hunk glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. "Sorry?"

"The thing with the speech and the president and whatnot. They're calling it a  _situation_  because they have no idea what happened." He grimaced, and added, more softly, "It was the same with Kerberos. Do you remember?" He didn't wait for a reply, his thoughts had too much momentum for that. "The  _situation at Kerberos,_  that's what they called it. Like: the situation at Kerberos is being investigated. The situation at Kerberos is well-contained. The situation at Kerberos is under the purview of people much smarter than you common folk, so lay off the protesting and conspiracy theories."

Hunk cracked a smile. "I'm pretty sure they never said that last one."

"Well, it was  _implied_  all the time. Did you read all the press releases - of course you didn't, you're a normal, well-adjusted human being with a life - anyways, the press releases kept getting more and more passive-aggressive, it was kinda hilarious. Also, it was all over Youtube - like, you could be watching a cat video and there'd be people arguing about RK in the comments."

Hunk's smile grew a tiny bit wider. "Yeah, that was your first mistake, reading Youtube comments."

"Hunk, my man," Lance paused for dramatic effect, "I don't make mistakes, how dare you imply otherwise."

"Right, right, forgive me for blaspheming your name, O Perfect One."

"You are forgiven," Lance said, with an imperious sniff.

The news station on TV had switched to live footage of protesters lined up and down the streets of San Francisco. Hunk scooted closer to the screen and propped his head on the side of the couch as he watched.

"They're gonna get themselves arrested," Lance said quietly.

"Yeah," Hunk said, frowning. "...it's kinda awful, isn't it? Nobody should be going to jail for speaking their mind."

"To be fair, if I were the president, I'd want the RK people to leave me alone too."

Hunk gave him a hard-ish look. "But would you gas them to make them leave you alone?"

"Only if they tried to attack me, which is totally possible, given all the crazies." The words came out pretty derogatory but also strangely affectionate.

"Lance," Hunk said, shaking his head disapprovingly.

"Hey, I'm allowed to drag them. I used to be one of them."

Hunk sat up straight and whipped his head around to look at Lance. "Wait, really?"

"Um, yeah. Back when Remember Kerberos was more of a memorial kinda thing." Lance kicked his feet up. "But then it got all...weird."

"Huh." Hunk kept staring. "I'm trying to picture this in my head, and I really can't."

Lance pointed a lazy hand gun at him. "Just gotta have a better imagination, honey. I'd probably still be in the movement, actually, if it weren't for my job."

"Are you serious?"

"Deadly." Lance flashed his best friend a cheerful, what-can-you-do grin. "I mean, they're crazy, but crazy don't mean  _wrong_."

Hunk looked at him like he was seeing him for the first time. "Let me get something straight - these people think that Shirogane and Holt found something out there, something that the government didn't want them to find, something that the government was willing to kill them for - and you  _agree_  with these people?"

"I didn't say that," Lance said, cheerfully unoffended. "I said that crazy doesn't equal wrong. I don't know if that means that they're right. Nobody knows that."

"But they  _are_  wrong," Hunk said, with a little frown. "We know what happened at Kerberos."

"Do we?" Lance tossed back.

Hunk rolled his eyes. "There's a boatload of wreckage where a space station used to be. It's pretty obvious what happened."

Lance waved that off. "No, no, the station obviously exploded, nobody's questioning that - well, I mean, some of the really crazy crazies do, but I don't. The question is: what happened to Shirogane and Holt?"

Hunk's eyebrows furrowed. "...they're...probably dead, man."

Lance held up fingers and counted as he spoke. "Three different committees slash task forces. Four retrieval missions. Six probes. Not a single one of them found bodies, and not a single one of them could explain why."

"Space is pretty big. And they found his arm, didn't they?"

"They found a thing that looked like an arm. And then they backtracked and said that it was probably just space debris."

Hunk eyed him. "Okay, not to burst your bubble, but, uh, that's not exactly overwhelming evidence that either of them got away alive."

"That's not the point, the point is - with an explosion that big, at the very least you should be finding bits and pieces of them."

"Maybe there's nothing to find. They were in an explosion. Explosions make things explode. Exploding things catch on fire. Maybe the bodies are just...you know...charred up." Hunk shuddered a little. "Not that it matters," he added, sounding wearier by the minute. "Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

"The problem is, I don't think it's adequately explained by stupidity."

Hunk squinted at him. "You're actually really - you really think that they're still alive."

Lance shook his head emphatically. "No. I think they're probably dead."

Hunk burst out in disbelieving laughter. "Okay, that is  _not_  the impression I'm getting over here."

"Lemme finish," Lance said, a wry grin on his face, "I think they survived the explosion. I don't think they survived...whatever the fuck else happened."

"Um," Hunk said.

"You don't have to agree with me," Lance said, shrugging. "I know you're a science guy, and evidence is what speaks to you. I don't have any evidence. Just a gut feeling that the pieces don't add up." He patted his belly. "Right here."

"That's probably just indigestion," Hunk said.

Lance rolled his eyes. "You're lucky I love you, Hunk, cuz that was just plain awful."

"You're a bad influence," Hunk said. "I swear my sense of humor was better before I met you."

Lance considered this. "Yeah, okay, that's fair."

"For the record," Hunk said, grinning affectionately, "I don't think you're necessarily wrong, either. I bet the Garrison  _is_  hiding something under all that bureacracy. I just don't think it's as nefarious as you think."

"As nefarious as RK thinks, you mean," Lance said. "I told you, I don't buy everything they're selling. Just little bits here and there."

Hunk made a face. "You make Remember Kerberos sound like a souvenoir shop."

Lance grinned. " _I went to a protest for Remember Kerberos,_ " he said, high and mocking, " _and all I got was arrested._ "

Hunk snorted in laughter and immediately looked ashamed for it. "That's kinda horrible."

"It's only funny cuz it's true."

"It's also only horrible because it's true."

"Well, I mean...yeah."

Hunk snorted again, and settled back onto the couch. They watched in companionable silence until the inevitable arresting started. Then Hunk turned the TV off and announced that they should go to sleep.

Lance snuck a glance at the clock - 1:32 AM, when the hell did that happen - and agreed.

* * *

Soldiers were ambling back and forth on the street between the radio station and the 7-11 today - Lance had no idea what they were doing, but they were doing it very seriously. Some of them glanced over, and for a heart-stopping moment he thought they were going to stop him and Hunk from going into the building, but they didn't.

Hunk looked thoughtfully back at them and waved. One of them waved back, sort of.

"Friendly people," Hunk said. It was impossible to tell whether he was being sarcastic or just Hunk.

"Yeah," Lance said, definitely being sarcastic.

"What do you think they're doing?" Hunk asked, popping open a bottle of their newly acquired Mexican Coke.

"Hunk, my man, I don't think  _they_  know what they're doing."

Hunk snorted. "Okay, probably. But to be fair, do  _we_  know what we're doing?"

"Well,  _I've_  been talking to the masses. And trying to find our missing Pidgey." Lance got up, and stretched.

Hunk grinned, tired but hopeful still. "And your radio boy- "

"Huuuunk," he whined. "Staaaahp."

"Your radio - " Hunk wheezed, laughing too hard to speak properly, " - boy - boyfriend."

Lance gave him the middle finger, and tried not to feel  _embarrassed,_  because why the fuck would he feel embarrassed, he had nothing to feel embarrassed about.

"If he calls," Hunk yelled after him, "I'll let him know you've been worried!"

Lance gave him double middle fingers for that.

It took five hours of chattering to burn through his residual mortification - talking on air was almost as good as therapy, sometimes. He called it a night after six.

By then, Hunk was asleep at the switchboard. Lance crawled into his sleeping bag, careful not to disturb him, and laid awake until the fitness center across the street opened so that he could take a shower and wash away the buildup of dirt and grease and something that felt very much like guilt.

* * *

The thing was, Lance really liked Hunk's plan. The sheer simplicity of it, the lack of risk involved, the implicit trust in the power of friendship - all good things, all excellent things, all things he liked.

Hunk, being the smart man that he was, clearly knew - or thought he knew - what was going on with Pidge. And, being the smart man that he was, he knew better than to tell Lance any of his juicier speculations, because he knew Lance couldn't keep a secret if his life depended on it.

What Hunk didn't know - because Lance took pains not to  _let_  him know - was that Lance was perfectly capable of keeping secrets if  _other_  people's lives depended on it. And, as a firm believer of the Golden Rule, he tried not to unearth other people's secrets unless they relinquished them willingly. Loose lips sink ships, and all that.

So.

He liked Hunk's plan a lot, for a lot of reasons. But most of all, he liked it because he didn't think it was going to work - and if it did, it would be on Pidge's terms.

Kitty was another story. Kitty didn't have an excuse - and even if he did, Lance didn't want to hear it. Kitty was gonna catch an  _earful_  next time he called, because Lance didn't have the time and energy to worry about two people on a long-term basis.

* * *

A few days of fruitless work later, they made the trek all the way to the Pines so that Hunk could pay his rent in person, because of course it had to be in person. Surely forcing Omegas to check in with their landlords once a month would keep them out of trouble. Surely loading them with a thousand daily inconveniences would keep their heads low.  _Surely_  that was how you stopped magi-terrorism.

Lance didn't think about Hunk's situation all that often. He made a point not to think about it, actually, because it would only make him angry, and Hunk didn't need the kind of attention than an angry Lance would draw.

It was hard not to think about it, now, surrounded by the cool iron gates of the only Omega-approved neighborhood in the city. It wasn't his first time visiting Hunk's humbler-than-humble abode, but it  _was_  the first time he'd stayed the night.

"It's quiet," he whispered to Hunk, somehow unwilling to disturb the stillness, even within the walls of Hunk's apartment. "Is it always this quiet?"

Hunk nodded. "Yeah. If anything, it's been noisier than usual, what with all the..." he made a vague gesture that Lance understood perfectly.

"Yeah, yeah, I get that." Lance rolled over until he was flat on his back, staring at the blank white ceiling.

Hunk's voice was, somehow, even quieter than Lance's. "One of the guys downstairs went to the protests yesterday."

"He did? Did he get arrested?"

Hunk huffed softly. "No. No, he ran off just in time. But it was close. He's not even Omega. His daughter is."

Lance opened and shut his mouth. Then he laid back and stared at the ceiling even harder. "Oh."

"Yeah."

"How young is she?" he asked quietly.

Hunk's response was just as quiet. "Twelve. They found out when she was six. One of her classmates had a little magic gauge, you know, one of those novelty ones that look like mood rings."

"Those things don't work, though," Lance said.

"Well, it worked just fine for her, probably because she tests crazy high, like, off the charts high. I bet if she sneezed into the Amazon river, she'd fix the whole rainforest."

Lance laughed, but only because Hunk was obviously trying to make him laugh. "It must really, really suck for her, though. Does she have to go to one of those special schools?"

"Once a week, yeah. But mostly she's homeschooled. I'm teaching her how to make robots. Maybe next month she'll be good enough to turn one in for shop class credit."

"That's really cool," Lance murmured, smiling with helpless affection. "Has she ever...?"

Hunk blinked. "Has she ever what?"

"You know. Has she ever subliminated?"

Hunk went shock-still next to him. Then he turned to look at Lance. "Lance, buddy," he said, wide-eyed. "That's a great question, I  _should've_  asked that question, and at this point I'm kinda scared to ask."

Lance snorted. "Of course you didn't."

"She was so, so cute, I didn't even think about it," Hunk said mournfully. "I mean, she's still really cute, but she was even cuter as a toddler. She just doesn't look like a ticking time bomb, you know?"

"Most people who end up subliminating don't show any warning signs," Lance said, in the manner of someone who was merely regurgitating an often-heard lecture.

Hunk shuddered. "Now you're just making me paranoid."

"For real, though." Lance poked Hunk's shoulder. "You need to ask. And if she hasn't already blown her top, you need to, like, prepare yourself. And your apartment. Maybe think about requesting an apartment transfer."

Hunk stared at him, a somber expression on his face. "Lance?"

"Yeah?"

"You let me sleep in your apartment."

Lance blinked at him. "...Yeah? And?"

"Lance," Hunk looked sad and worried and just a little guilty, "I haven't subliminated either. So. I mean, there's a chance..."

They looked at each other, silent, for a good minute and a half. Then, softly, Lance said, "Hunk...don't take this the wrong way, but with your personality being what it is, I don't think that even a subconscious burst of magic from you is capable of hurting me, or anybody else."

"Okay, look, I don't see the  _right_  way to take that," Hunk said, smiling weakly.

"It was supposed to be a compliment," Lance said, patting his best friend reassuringly.

"Oh, great, it was supposed to be a compliment, that solves everything."

"Look," Lance said, running his hand through his hair, "I don't know how to say this without making it sound like I'm ignoring your magic, because I'm not, okay? It's super important to you, and it should be, because it's...it's a part of you. Right?" He shifted slightly, uncomfortably. "I just...you're my best friend. So I think you're worth the risk. Whatever that risk may be."

Hunk's eyes looked big and wobbly.

"Oh my god," Lance said, "please don't cry."

Hunk sniffled alarmingly. "Not crying. Not crying. I'm okay." He took a deep breath. "Whew. Okay. Not crying."

"Not crying," Lance repeated back to him, patting him again.

"Right." He wiped his eyes. "I don't...I don't know how my neighbors do it. Living here with her, I mean. They don't have a speck of magic in them. But they love her so much, it's almost like it doesn't matter."

"Familial love," Lance said, with a tiny, helpless, strained smile. "Gotta love it."

Hunk shook his head. "If I were them, I don't know if I would've made the same decision. There are lots of magical couples who desperately want to adopt magical kids, so..." He let out a wry little chuckle. "I'm a coward, you know? If I didn't have magic and my kid could blow me up if she got mad at me...god, that'd be an awful situation, no matter what you do about it."

Lance bit his lip hard enough to puncture skin. "You're more of a pragmatist than a coward," he said finally.

Hunk huffed. "Yeah, maybe, but they're not mutually exclusive." They were both quiet for a minute or so, until Hunk said, softly, "Hey, Lance? I don't say this enough, but thanks for...for being you. I'm really glad that you're my friend."

Lance bit his lip even harder. His chest ached with a feeling not unlike suffocation. "No problem," he said, keeping his voice calm with the force of practice.

When Hunk finally drifted off, snoring lightly, Lance rolled off the air mattress and tip-toed to the balcony, closing the door behind him. It was cold outside, but he was shaking for another reason altogether. "Fuck," he whispered, "fuck, fuck, fuck."

He really didn't think about Hunk's situation all that often - because if he did, he'd start thinking about the weight of his one real secret, slowly but surely crushing him.

"Fuck," he said one last time, tossing the word into the wind. Then he slumped back into the apartment, somehow feeling worse than before.

If Hunk was a coward, then what the hell was Lance?

* * *

The answer to that question - or one answer, at least - was  _starving_. The scent of pancakes dug him out of his dreams, and the sound of Hunk humming in the kitchen dug him out of the covers.

"Morning," he said, yawning widely.

"Good morning," Hunk said, flipping a pancake onto a white plate. "It rained pretty hard last night, eh?"

Lance's fingers paused halfway to the pancake plate. "Oh, it did?" he asked, carefully casual. His heartbeat thrummed in his ears.

"Yeah. Nearly drowned my plants." Hunk gestured outside, where it was bright and clear and wet everywhere. "If I'd known that it was gonna rain, I would've brought them in."

Lance pulled his hand back and sat down in the chair, all proper-like. "Bad luck, then. Want me to, like, get a bunch of paper towels for them?"

Hunk grinned. "Nah, s'okay. They'll live. I mean, keeping them alive is literally what I do best." He touched one of the herb plants on the windowsill and rubbed a leaf between his fingers gently.

Lance nodded. There wasn't a whole lot he could say.  _Sorry,_  maybe, but that'd mean explaining why he was sorry, and he was probably never going to be ready for that conversation.

After every last bit of pancake batter had been converted into pancakes, Hunk arranged the plates and the cutlery into a picture-perfect table setting, complete with a maple syrup dispenser. Privately, Lance thought that such pretty dishes and placemats didn't belong in a place like this - which was a stupid thought, of course, because pretty dishes and placemats belonged everywhere. He only had a problem with these particular dishes and placemats because they were Hunk's, and Hunk  _definitely_  didn't belong in a place like this. "They're delicious," he said, chomping on his first bite, channeling his feelings into chewing and swallowing - not that he needed the extra boost. He really was starving.

Hunk beamed at him. "Thanks." He cleared his throat. "Hey, so I've been thinking...maybe we've been going about this the wrong way."

"This?" Lance repeated, scrunching up his forehead.

"You know. Looking for Pidge and Kitty."

"Oh." He chewed a little more, swallowed. "The floor is yours. What're you thinking?"

"Well, here's the thing." Hunk leaned over, bright and enthusiastic. "Pidge doesn't  _do_  radio calls. Public speaking, even anonymously, is not his schtick."

"Pidge," Lance said, snorting, "doesn't do  _people."_

Hunk pointed to him excitedly. "Yes! Exactly."

Lance blinked at him.

His lack of enthusiasm - or rather, lack of understanding - didn't deter Hunk in the slightest. "Look, let's say  _you_  were the one who went missing. And let's say that Pidge and I kept up your radio show - somehow - and tried to get you to call in. You'd totally do it. We'd hear from you within the  _hour_. But Pidge isn't like you." Hunk grinned and gestured wildly with a forkful of pancake in his hand. "You don't go looking for a fish in the sky."

"Right," Lance said, slowly, starting to resonate with Hunk's energy, "you'd look in the sea." He paused. "Am I using this metaphor right?"

Hunk shrugged. "Close enough."

"Yeah, okay," Lance snorted. "So what you're saying is that we have to, uh, look for Pidge's sea. Right?"

"Well, actually," Hunk said, looking a little sheepish, "I've already gotten started."

"...Hunkkk," he whined. "Why you gotta do me wrong like this?"

"I'm sorrrry," Hunk replied in exactly the same tone, "it's just that I woke up thinking about it and I couldn't sleep afterwards so I decided to make good use of the time - "

"Hunkkkkk," he whined again.

" _Anyways_ ," Hunk said, clearly a little desperate to change the topic, "I found Pidge's room."

Lance sat up straight. "You what?"

"You know he goes to Caltech, right? I checked some directories online and found one with room assignments."

"...is...are you supposed to be able to find that stuff?"

Hunk looked a little guilty.

Lance snorted. "Right. Okay. Go on?"

"So, anyways, I was thinking...do you wanna go check it out?"

Lance frowned. "I don't know..."

Hunk's face dropped. "What? Why not?"

"Bro, I don't know about you, but doesn't it sound kinda creepy that we tracked his address down? I'm willing to do a lot of things in the name of friendship, but I kinda draw the line at stalking."

Hunk blinked. "Oh. I didn't even think about that." He was visibly deflating.

Lance sighed. "It's a good idea, just... a little extreme, right now."

"Mmmm," Hunk chewed thoughtfully on his pancake. "But if we don't hear from him in the next couple of days..."

Lance sighed again. "Yeah. We'll check on him."

Hunk beamed at him. "Okay." Then his beaming took on a mischievous edge. "Now, about our second missing person..."

Lance groaned. "Okay, you know what - I don't know even know why we've been waiting for him. It's not like we know him, right?"

Hunk gave him a look. "Pidge knows him," he pointed out.

"We don't  _know_  that for sure," Lance muttered.

Hunk snorted. "Yeah, and his records just  _happened_  to vanish, right?"

"Maybe he's a good hacker."

"Better than Pidge?"

Lance shut his mouth. "Okay. Okay, fair."

Hunk slanted him a sly look. "B'sides, even if he  _doesn't_  know Pidge... he knows  _you_."

"We've just talked on the radio - that doesn't mean I know him," Lance grumbled.

Hunk snorted. "You've been talking to him for almost an hour a day for weeks, bro."

"But we're not  _friends_  or anything," he whined.

"Course not," Hunk said, unconcerned, "he's your radio boyfriend."

Lance groaned. "Okay, that was a funny joke the first time, but it's getting real old now."

Hunk looked at him. "The thing is," he said, gentle as the beat of a butterfly's wings, "I'm not joking."

Lance calmly cut off a piece of pancake with his knife, loaded it onto his fork, and flung it at Hunk.

Hunk laughed gleefully and returned the favor.

* * *

His success in evading the subject of Kitty Rose was short-lived, but not because of Hunk.

No, this one was on Lance.

Or, to be a bit more precise, Lance's subconscious.

"Did you know, Pasadena, that the phrase  _blood is thicker than water_  actually means the opposite of what people think it means? The full, unabridged version is  _the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb_. And some countries have a slightly...weirder variation on the theme:  _blood is thicker than milk,_  the milk in question being breastmilk."

The words spilled casually, thoughtlessly out of his mouth. Absentminded talking was basically his superpower. He didn't know where this monologue was going, because he never did; he just let his mouth run and trusted his subconscious not to reveal any incriminating information aside from his own name.

"The point is," he blabbed on, "family is a lot of things, guys, but it isn't everything. Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives...they're super important, too. Sometimes, they  _are_  your family."

Correction: he hadn't known where this monologue was going, until this exact moment.

And then he thought, shit, shit,  _shit._

Because Hunk was right - it didn't matter that he didn't know Kitty, not really. It didn't matter, because it still hurt like salt on a papercut that the asshole would leave him hanging like this.

So he had a choice between yanking the cord on a silent phone and...doing absolutely nothing.

The heart in his throat made the choice for him. "What I'm trying to say is, I get that there are Things Happening. I get that a lot of you are making Things Happen. But us sideliners...we have feelings too. Let us know how you're doing, okay? We don't need to share blood to worry about you."

And then he waited. Not in silence, mind you, because he was too professional to inflict dead air on his listeners. But he waited, and he swung by the topic of friends and troublemakers a few more times, just to really drive it in.

This time, because he actually tried to say something, because he put himself out there, the disappointment when no one checked in was absolutely crushing.

Afterwards, he spent an hour talking Hunk down from breaking into Pidge's room at Caltech.

But there was no one to talk him down from calling his mama about the whole mess, because even if she already knew about it - she knew  _everything_ , after all - he wanted to hear her in his ear, gently scolding him for hanging around troublemakers, as if there was nothing greater at stake than getting caught with a can of beer at high school prom.

* * *

First Lady Allura Altea was beautiful dressed in all black. She was always beautiful, even when she was stirring kerosene into the black pit of public opinion.

Lance loved and hated her in equal measure, so he felt both angry for and angry at her when she stood up on national television at 6am on a cold Sunday morning and ended the embargo of information about the White House  _situation_ with a few minor bombshells.

"My father," she said, voice strong even on the radio station's ancient, boxy television, "is dead."

And then, "He died protecting this country from itself."

And then, "With the support of his cabinet, I will carry out the remainder of his term."

And then, "Martial law is in full effect, as of this moment."

And then, "All militant magical groups and their affiliates are encouraged to cooperate by disbanding immediately."

And then, "To the perpetrators...I wish you luck."

Hunk had a half-nibbled piece of jerky in his hand as he listened to her address. His eyes were half-closed. He was paying attention, but not raptly.

Hunk, he knew, didn't love or hate Allura as much as he did. That, he also knew, was because Hunk didn't feel the same sense of kinship with her that Lance did.

It was a myth that magic users could recognize each other, but people with the same secret could always sniff each other out.

* * *

"Hey, Pasadena, do you believe in miracles?" Lance paused, took a quick gulp of water, and continued: "Cuz I do. I mean, it's practically necessary at this point, right? I have to believe in miracles. Otherwise I'll never be able to believe that things'll get better." He sighed. "My friend and I keep staying up late, watching TV. I bet a lot of you were doing the same. And, like. I'm not trying to pick sides, but. But. I just."

He took a long, strung-out breath.

"I'm sorry, guys. I just don't know what to say. I knew this was going to be a cluster, you know? I was just kinda hoping it would pass quicker. I miss getting muffins from my favorite bakery on my way to work. I miss being able to drive to work - or anywhere, really. Heck, I even miss running into rush hour traffic. I know these are tiny problems in the grander scheme of things. I know that I'm missing the forest for the trees, and I should try to stop doing that, because the forest is, like, burning down. I know these things. Don't call in if that's all you've got to say to me."

Another breath, even longer and more strung-out.

"All I'm saying is that now would be a really, really good time to prove me right about miracles."

This time, when Pasadena agreed with him, it made him feel worse, not better.

* * *

It was calm the next morning.

Like, supernaturally calm.

He realized something was wrong as soon as he woke up, because it was quiet, and while that was typical for Hunk's place, it wasn't anywhere near typical for Lance's, not with the proximity of three strip mall parking lots that made for easy protesting ground.

When he opened the window to see what was going on, he caught a lungful of air that smelled like petrichor and ozone and the slightest touch of chlorine, like...home.

Lance didn't trust it one bit. He forced out all the air in his lungs so hard that he wheezed from the effort, and slammed the window shut.

"Lance?" came Hunk's worried voice, increasing in volume as the man himself swept into the room and found Lance slumped against the wall, wiping his mouth.

"Hunk," he said, his voice crackly and hoarse, "don't open the window - just - hold on, hold on, hold on - " as he dashed into the hallway closet and hauled out his air purification machine. It was an older model, fitted with the kind of anti-magic filters everybody used to have, back when they thought you could catch magic like the common cold.

"What's going on?" Hunk flicked his eyes from the window to the purring air purifier, and then to Lance.

"I don't know - the air's all  _weird._ " Lance squinted through the glass. "I just...ugh. Shit." He wiped his mouth again and coughed.

Hunk's eyes widened. "...what do you mean, weird?"

"I dunno!" Lance threw his hands into the air. "It smells...off. Like - okay, this is gonna sound really crazy."

"Try me," Hunk said softly.

Lance gave him a wan smile. "There's a beach around where I grew up," he said, trying to gather his thoughts into something resembling reason and rationality. "Varadero beach. Beautiful place. Clearest water I've ever touched. When I was a kid, it was my favorite place ever, no contest. I remember being there like it was yesterday. I remember exactly how the sand felt on my skin. I remember - I remember what it smelled like, even - like mist and salt and seaweed. Some places don't leave your head, you know? Varadero beach was one of those places."

"Okay."

"And that," Lance jabbed his thumb toward the window, "smells  _exactly_  like Varadero beach."

Hunk sat down hard on the chair next to Lance, eyes serious. "Okay," he said simply.

Lance took a deep breath. "Sorry. I sound like a fucking lunatic."

Hunk shrugged. "Hey, if that's what you're scenting...I trust you."

They both jumped when the phone suddenly rang. After exchanging a wary glance with Hunk, Lance picked up and opened his mouth...only to shut it again with a click. "Yes, sir," he said after a few seconds. Then, quieter with each iteration, he repeated, "Yes, yes, yes...yes." By the time he hung up, his eyebrows were almost at his hairline.

Hunk leaned forward, resting on his knees. "What's up?"

"That was  _Iverson_ ," Lance said, in a quietly stunned voice, "asking why we aren't at work."

* * *

For once, he and Hunk were equally paranoid about what was going on, which resulted in a thirty minute scavenger hunt around Lance's apartment for respiratory masks before they braved the outside.

The smell wasn't as strong as it would've been without the benefit of a filter, but it was still there, on the edge of Lance's awareness. Hunk took a quick whiff and reported that it smelled "rather like a Maillard reaction," whatever that was. Nothing beachlike, at any point. Lance didn't know what to make of the scent, or the obvious discrepancy between their perceptions of it, but he had the distinct feeling that it was nothing good.

They were probably walking into the world's most obvious trap, he thought glumly. If it hadn't been for Hunk's goody-two-shoes-ness, Lance would've barricaded himself in his apartment and ignored Iverson completely. Then again, if it hadn't been for his goody-two-shoes-ness, Hunk probably wouldn't have gotten hired in the first place, and Lance would've gone mad in this job ages ago. There was only so much bullshit a person could take without having somebody to commiserate with.

* * *

As it turned out, it was not the world's most obvious trap. It might, however, qualify for the world's most trap-like non-trap.

Because, as it turned out, the radio station was completely back to  _normal_.

Gone was the carpet of paperwork, gone was the mess. Machines were whirring, and people were bustling around spreading an air of busy-ness. Iverson called them into the office, yelled at them, and told them to get to work. For all intents and purposes, everything was business as usual.

The only evidence that the past two weeks of stagnation had happened at all was Iverson's curt threat to fire Pidge if he didn't come in.

Prior to two hours ago, Lance hadn't known anything about air magic except that it existed. Now he knew that it existed and was terrifying.

"Good morning, Pasadena," Lance said to his invisible audience, back in the recording studio, "it looks like you finally got your beauty sleep."

After a moment, he added, feeling just as invisible as his audience: "And it looks like I got my miracle."

* * *

Somehow, he got through the entire morning session without stumbling all over himself, but the whole thing was like a fever dream. He couldn't remember anything that he'd said. Hunk told him that it had been a good show, that he'd managed to do his usual magic - god, what horrible wording - but he couldn't care less about the show, not when it felt like the world was fucking with them.

And so, as they piled into Lance's car together at the end of the day because there was no way in hell they were splitting up now, Lance said, "Let's go to Caltech," because one out of two was better than nothing.

Pidge's door, unlike most of the others in the same dorm, was completely bereft of decorations. It was also bolted from the inside, as they found out when Lance managed to convince the RA to let them borrow the master key but the door still refused to open.

While Lance did his best to persuade the RA that they needed a locksmith, Hunk went off to investigate whether or not anybody had seen Pidge around for the past few weeks. He was back within the hour. "Security's been a bit tighter around the dorms ever since...you know," he said. "I showed the campus patrol his picture, and no one recognized him. But I also showed them a picture of that RA we just met, and no one remembers seeing  _him_  around either. I don't think they're all that attentive, to be honest."

"Some security," Lance said, scoffing.

Hunk simply shrugged. His face was strangely closed off. "Yeah," he said, in an uncharacteristically serious voice, "some security."

"I take it none of his classmates have seen him, either?"

This time, Hunk's expression actually darkened. "No."

Lance blinked at the sudden shift in Hunk's mood. "Uh...okay?"

Hunk slumped into the seat next to Lance and sighed. "No. No one's seen him. He hasn't been in any classes all year."

Lance blinked again, this time at the new information. "That sounds like a me move, not a Pidge move."

Hunk slumped even deeper into his seat. "Yeah. Yeah, it does." He had that voice again, the one that he pulled out when he was thinking something bad but didn't want to say anything.

Lance prodded him. "Hunk? Hunky dory? Hunk smash? You okay there?"

"Fine," Hunk said, in the single most not-fine voice Lance had ever heard.

"Oh, c'mon," Lance said, groaning. "Don't lie to me, bro, you suck at lying."

Hunk pouted at him.

"You doooo," Lance sang, laughing. "What's up, seriously? You look like somebody stabbed your puppy."

"S'nothing."

"It's obviously not nothing."

Hunk chewed on his lip. "It kinda is?"

Lance rolled his eyes at him, and tried a different tactic. "Okay, fine. If you don't wanna tell me, I guess that's cool too." He swung himself to the side of the chair, and popped up into a standing postion with his hands in his pockets.

Hunk skuttled after him apologetically. "Nonono, it's not like that," he protested. "It's just...you know, Pidge and I...we were kinda...ugh, I'm sorry, it's just..."

Lance whipped his head around to stare at him. " _Oh really,_ " he said loudly.

Hunk turned scarlet. "Not like that! I didn't meant it like that!"

Lance aimed two finger guns at him. "You go, boy - I mean, Pidge ain't my type, but he's pretty cute I guess - "

"Lance, omigosh,  _no_ , it's just that we're both - " Hunk clamped his hands over his own mouth, stopping himself mid-sentence. After a second or two, he loosened his fingers to finish weakly, "...into the same hobbies..."

"Like I said," Lance said, snickering, "not my type but - "

"Lance," Hunk said helplessly. "We're really  _not._ "

"Not yet, you mean?"

"NO, we're just  _not_."

"Okay, bro - "

"Seriously, Lance, it's just because he  _gets_  me when I complain about, you know. Stuff."

Lance raised an eyebrow. "Stuff."

"Yeah." Hunk shifted awkwardly. "Stuff."

"Hunk, buddy...I dunno how to tell you this, but - "

"Oh my god," Hunk said, rolling his eyes to the sky. "If I stop calling Kitty your radio boyfriend, will you stop?"

Lance beamed at him. " _Absolutely._ " he chirped.

"Thank god."

* * *

On Thursday the White House released a wanted list: the most likely suspects for the former President's assassination, ranked from one to twenty. Just the concept of it was absurd. How could you make a list of the people who wanted Alfor Altea dead and limit it to only twenty names? How was it even supposed to be  _ranked_? By most dangerous? Every Omega in the country would have made the list, then. By the most motivated? Ridiculous. The number of tragedies that Alfor Altea had signed into existence was closer to twenty thousand than twenty. They'd have to use some kind of point system to distill the sea of human grief and grieving humans down to a manageable selection. The idea of it was absurd enough that Lance could imagine it actually happening: some overworked government peon with a spreadsheet and a database, plugging in one point for each lost parent, one point for every sibling, one point for a dear friend, one point for every child, maybe two if you only had one child to begin with, another one or two points for the love of your life, a multiplier if you lost them all at once, and a bonus point if you had magic yourself but not enough to trip any alarms, because nothing was more tragic than surviving for no reason other than your own relative mediocrity. Lance himself could easily claim three points, but who was counting?

Well. Actually.  _He_  was counting. That was how he knew he had three. Because he'd been counting.

It was so typical of him to lose an argument with himself in his own damn head. He sucked down the rest of his beer with a quiet, disparaging snort.

If a single butterfly had beat its wings one degree further north, maybe he would have been on that list too. But then again, maybe there wouldn't have been a list at all. Maybe that one degree of difference would have changed everything. Maybe there would have been no such thing as magi-militants, or Kerberos, or sublimation. Maybe...maybe there would have been no such thing as magic.

Beside him, Hunk made to stand up. His face was somber. "I'll go get started on dinner."

"You okay?" he asked, tapping Hunk's hip with the empty bottle.

Hunk smiled at him and gave him two hearty thumbs up. The sudden facade of cheerfulness wasn't his best work, but it was better than Lance could have dredged up, if their positions had been reversed. "I'm good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Anything specific you want for dinner?"

Lance opened his mouth to say, "Nah, you pick," but didn't even get as far as the first syllable before he felt a insistent tug in the back of his head - impossible to ignore, because that was the nature of magic, and his magic in particular. He tried to ignore it anyways. Sometimes he could. Sometimes things worked out even when he didn't rely on a supernatural second chance to get things right.

Hunk was looking behind him. "Hey," he said, his eyes wide.

Lance turned.

Splashed across the television screen was a black and white photo, more grain than detail. But, even so, it was impossible to miss those eyes.

"Hey," Hunk said again, breathing harder. "Isn't that - "

Lance sighed heavily, and let the tide turn back on that particular dry run.

The second time around, he said, "Fricase de pollo," and sat up to block Hunk's view of the television.

Hunk gave him a disbelieving look, distracted by indignance more than anything. "You want fricase de pollo and you couldn't have asked me  _sooner_?"

No, he thought, trying not to laugh hysterically. No, he really couldn't have asked any sooner. He had, as a matter of fact, almost been too late. "Please?"

Hunk smacked his forehead. "Oh my god, Lance," he groaned. "That'll take at least an hour. Do we even have any olives?"

"Pretty, pretty please?"

Hunk sighed at him, helplessly fond. "Okay, okay, fine. I'll see what I can do." "You are the literal best," he said.

Hunk laughed and leaned forward to ruffle his hair. "Of course I am," he said loftily. "Only the literal best will do for my best friend."

"Ditto, duh, obviously," Lance said. Then he waited until Hunk was gone before sliding down and glancing at the TV. The same photo, the same face, was staring back at him.

Lazily, he grabbed his empty bottle and toasted her image with it. "Hey," he murmured, squinting at the name below the ashy, ghostly face, framed by equally ashy, ghostly hair. "Hannah Garcia. Sucks that you're a wanted criminal. Guess I'm lucky you shot me down."

Under the veil of fading inebriation, the gears in his mind began to turn.

They turned even harder when the overly demonstrative TV anchor dropped his voice to drop the fact that lovely little Hannah Garcia had an affinity for - one dramatic beat - two dramatic beats - fire.

Feeling colder still, he looked at the far wall to the east, where the radio tower was.

Thanks for the Coke, he thought, struck by a sudden longing for the aftertaste of cane sugar, even as he made definitive plans to get rid of the rest of their stash. It wasn't personal. It wasn't about Hannah Garcia. It was about magic and fire magic in particular, which had an impolite tendency to stick to everything and leave messy I-was-here's everywhere.

It was about Hunk, and it was about  _only the literal best will do for my best friend_.

Hunk's best was better than Lance's best, but the least he could do was stop Hunk from getting into trouble.

* * *

Iverson had been strangely merciful that morning, opting for a brief 5 minute lecture instead of his usual 30 before he waved them off to do their real jobs.

Lance had commented on it, wondering aloud, "Maybe that weird air finally got to him." It was only after he said it that he realized he might've hit the nail on the head.

Hunk commented back, "It's been a couple of days already. I guess I'm not surprised that this is as calm as he gets, and that it takes him this long to get there."

They exchanged meaningful looks. "You too, huh," Lance said, after a while.

"Hard to miss the fact that I'm not freaking out every couple of minutes," Hunk returned, with a tiny grimace. "Judging by past precedent, I really should be."

Lance snorted in reply. "Are you grateful?"

Hunk gave him a steely look. "That somebody's dicking with my brain?"

"Not just your brain," Lance said. "Everybody's. S'not personal."

Hunk was quiet for a bit, regarding him thoughtfully. "Only you," he said finally, "would find that reassuring in any way."

Lance laughed. It was funny because it was true.

Hunk shook his head at him. "Doesn't it bother you at all?" The despair in his voice was real.

Lance resisted the urge to laugh even harder. He swallowed his first three replies, and went with the fourth: "At least this way it's fair, you know?"

Hunk stared at him. "Fair how?"

"Well," Lance said, feeling absurdly cheerful, or maybe just cheerfully absurd, "I don't claim to be an expert on air magic, but magic in general follows the laws of conservation, right?"

"Right," Hunk said slowly.

"If we're all feeling incredibly calm, that means that whoever's casting the calmness on us has to be losing an equivalent amount of calm. Right?"

Very slowly, Hunk closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his face. "No, Lance. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works."

"It isn't?" Lance asked, genuinely a bit put out.

"No," Hunk said. "Magic follows the laws of conservation because it can't be destroyed and it can't be created. But it's also a force. It's a variable. You can account for it. You wouldn't say air resistance is a violation of the law of gravity, right? Magic isn't a violation of physics, either. You can't just - pluck the feeling of calm out of somebody's brain and put it in somebody else. There's no such thing as conservation of calm. You can't spend calm to make everybody else calmer. But...you  _can_  spend magic to trick people into making  _themselves_  calmer." The distinction between the two seemed to be as unassailable to Hunk as it was meaningless to Lance.

"Oh," Lance said, frowning.

Hunk took one look at him and sighed. "I'm not explaining this well."

"No," Lance said, frowning even harder. "It's not you."

"It's not you, either," Hunk said, generously.

Lance laughed. "When did you get so good at lying, boy scout?"

Hunk shoved him gently. Then he brightened and snapped his fingers. "I got it! Think about it like this: what's the difference between paint and a painting?"

Lance stared at him. "One," he hazarded a guess, "is on a canvas?"

"No," Hunk said. "Well, I mean. Yes. But that's not what I'm trying to get at. Though you're not far off, either, I guess." His grin was dimmer, but still there. "The difference between paint and a painting is the  _painter_. You get your - your conservation of mass and matter, whatever, because the amount of paint doesn't change. But it changes shape. It changes function. It becomes  _meaningful_."

"So...magic is a painter."

Hunk nodded furiously. "Magic is a painter."

Lance thought carefully. "...in that case...are you a Da Vinci or a Pollock?"

Hunk stared at him. "Neither," he asserted, something like a scandalized schoolteacher in his voice, "obviously I'm an obscure still life painter who specializes in food. It's like you don't even know me."

Lance laughed and laughed until he cried. It was funny because it was nowhere near true.

By the time he was finally able to regain control of himself, Hunk was beaming at him from across the room, where he was dipping water into the terracotta pot of a basil plant. "You know, it's a good thing that magic doesn't work the way you think it does. Otherwise I'd have to kill something to keep my plants alive."

"Ha!" Lance dissolved back into a puddle of giggles. "I didn't even think about that." He tried to picture Hunk seeking out blood sacrifices like a proper necromancer, but his imagination had no source material for what a proper necromancer would actually look like, and in the end he just pictured Hunk in his old, vaguely lacey apron, standing over a cauldron. He had no idea why he'd given Necromancer Hunk a cauldron, either, except that it had fit the theme of absurdity.

Hunk laughed too, in an affectionate what-do-I-even-do-with-you kinda way. "Why would you? I mean, it's not like you lay awake at night wondering how magic works."

He had to smile at that, too warm and loose to even feel the sting of Hunk's certainty. "What, you do?"

Hunk blinked at the question, and sighed. "Sometimes."

Lance blinked at the answer, and sighed, too. "You know what I think? I think you think too much."

"Somebody has to make up for you," Hunk said mildly.

"Hey. Falsehoods and slander."

"Not from me." Hunk grinned at him. "Boy scout, remember?"

Lance groaned. "Defeated by my own clever turn of phrase."

"It  _was_  clever," Hunk said.

"Thank you. Thank you. I'll be here all week."

Hunk rolled his eyes.

"You've changed, Hunk," he said, in mock dismay and real delight. "That was rude. You're being rude."

"Last I checked, you  _like_  rude, though," he retorted, grinning. "Like, really,  _really_  like rude." Then he waggled his eyebrows.

It was a real testament to Hunk's skill with nonverbal communication, and Lance's familiarity with his inability to leave well enough alone, that the tangent of a tangent could change the subject so clearly. But Lance was surprised by the surge of fury that suddenly bubbled in his chest before it burst when he breathed in his next lungful of conservation-of-magic air.

Hunk snickered until he caught the look Lance was throwing him. Then his eyes went wide, his mouth soft and slack.

"No," Lance said, feeling strangely worn thin, "I don't like rude."

"Lance," Hunk said, biting his lip, still wide-eyed.

"I don't," he repeated, and he blinked away tears, because he was so, so done with waiting for nothing, god.

"Lance," Hunk said, even more quietly, reaching up to rub his shoulder gently. "I'm sorry." He looked it, too.

"I'm not mad," Lance said, because it was the truth.

Hunk looked even sorrier. "But you would've been. If this weren't, you know." He made a vague gesture outside, where the air was so calm and still that you could hear a songbird crooning a mile away - if there had been any songbirds crooning, anyways.

Lance slowly crushed his face against his best friend's shoulder. "Yeah," he admitted, "yeah, I would've been. I would've been really, really pissed."

Hunk winced, as if that admission was more hurtful than anything else. "I'm sorry," he said.

Lance sighed. "I wouldn't have been pissed at  _you_ , dummy."

Hunk gave him a look.

Lance laughed. What did it say about him that in a situation like this, hurting Hunk's feelings made him feel better? Hunk was wrong. Calmness, happiness, guilt and sadness and anger, the whole spectrum of human emotion - none of it came without a cost. He hadn't been able to destroy his resentment, so he'd had to give it away instead.

* * *

The thing was, he really  _didn't_  like rude people. His mama had brought him up well enough to recognize a bad thing for what it was. But she had also brought him up to believe that the end goal was to shame a bad thing into being a good thing, and a good thing into an even better thing. His mama was astonishingly Catholic, sometimes, but it had really worked on him and his brothers and sisters.

It wouldn't work on everyone. It wouldn't even work on most people.

It definitely wouldn't have worked on Kitty.

He caught that stray thought and shoved it onto the overcrowded backburner.

In the cool darkness of his own apartment, lying alone in his own bed, he lifted his hand up to the crack of light from a streetlamp filtering through his blinds. It was almost dark enough, then, that opening his eyes and closing his eyes didn't change anything.

Almost dark enough.

He resisted the urge to take all of his blankets and cover the windows until the world was narrowed down to just the four walls of his bedroom.

If Kitty were here -

Another stray thought. Another splash of oil on the backburner.

He rubbed his eyes desperately.

If Kitty were here, he would've smacked Lance on the head and told him to get to sleep or his IQ would drop to comical lows. It was such a vivid play-by-play that he had to convince himself that they'd never had that particular conversation, that he was putting words into a mouth he'd never seen. How pathetic was that? His mama would have shamed him for it. His mama would have said,  _Mi amor, if you only want things when they're gone, you'll end up with nothing._

That was a pretty vivid line, too. But the conversation, at least, was a real one. It had happened. And Lance had survived it, just as he would survive having nothing if he really had to.

* * *

"There is still an active suppression order in place," Iverson snapped waspishly at them at their next pre-show yelling session, "so you would do well to remember not to mention those Kerberos fools."

"Right," Lance said absent-mindedly, "no mentioning the RK people, got it."

"I mean it, McClain. You were pushing it yesterday. Don't let me catch you doing it again."

Lance was honestly, seriously tempted to ask if Iverson had nothing better to do than listen to radio chatter all day, because that would explain why he was so grumpy all the time. Instead, because Lance was first and foremost a professional coward, he just said, "Yes sir."

Iverson's one functional eye rotated between the two of them. His eyebrows were drawn tight like a curtain. "And if either of you useless fools has a line to Gunderson, tell him that his time's up and his things are headed for the dumpster." He didn't give them a chance to respond, sweeping out of the room with a sharp, "Dismissed!"

"Yes, sir," Hunk said to the door, with his eyebrows drawn even tighter.

Lance squinted. "Huh. Nice of him."

Hunk stared at him. "What?"

"Well." He stuffed his hands in his jeans. "Maybe nice isn't the right word, but I didn't expect him to be thoughtful enough to  _warn_  Pidge about tossing his shit out."

"Thoughtful," Hunk said, "isn't the right word either."

"I think you're biased," Lance snickered, "cuz he's picking on your sweetheart."

Hunk looked at him. For a long silent moment, Lance remembered what happened yesterday, and panicked at the thought that he'd made a sore spot in their relationship and stepped on it. Then Hunk  _grinned,_  dazzlingly wicked. "I thought we had a deal."

Lance stared at him, not really getting it until he really got it. "Oh shit, yeah, I guess we did."

"Well," Hunk said, grinning even more. "I guess the deal's off."

"Oh, shit," Lance said, wincing. "I guess it is."

He just couldn't win for losing, it seemed. That was familiar enough.

At least Hunk was kind enough to let him off with just a laugh and a pat on the back. That was familiar, too, even if it was undeserved.

* * *

By the time seven o'clock rolled around, Hunk was completely back to his usual self, mumbling snarky comments as they set up for that morning's show, mostly along the lines of  _not talking about it is NOT going to make it stop,_  and  _he does realize people can look outside their windows and see exactly what's going on, right?_

Lance did his best to keep a straight face and play devil's advocate for his best friend, but halfway through the commentary he gave up and joined in the fun. "No, no, surely people will stop getting angry about being ignored if you keep ignoring them,  _surely_  that's the solution to this mess - "

"And surely people with magic are gonna miraculously stop wanting rights, too!"

"Surely," Lance said.

"Suuuuurely," Hunk said back.

"Surelyyyyy."

"Sureeeeely."

"Suuuuuuuuureeeeely."

And so on, and so forth, until the digital clock flashed 8:00 AM and Lance flipped on his radio personality like a switch. "Good morning, Pasadena, how was your beauty sleep? Sorry to disappoint you so soon this morning, but I've actually been having a  _great_  day, so...no rants are scheduled for today's show. I got  _nothin'_ , guys. Which ain't a bad thing, you know? Once upon a time in the olden days of news media, the BBC was having such a slow day that they said, 'There is no news today,' and played piano music instead. I'm going to take a leaf out of their book. Prepare yourselves, ladies and gentlemen...today I'm playing DJ."

And then, with a light, unseen flourish of his hand, he let the music roll.

In truth, he'd originally had big plans for today - well, big in the relative sense, anyways, because there was no way he could beat the stuff that was happening on the news - but, again, professional coward, so instead he called Hunk with the phone line and continued as if they hadn't been interrupted at all. "Suuuuuuuuureeeeeely."

"Dude," Hunk said. There was an restrained quality to his voice, like he was muffling himself.

Lance sat up straight. "What? What happened?"

Hunk just sort of...giggled to himself. Then there was the softest of clicks as he connected Lance to another line without answering the question.

"Rude," Lance sputtered quietly. Then he cleared his throat and hung the phone between his shoulder and chin. "Hello! Lance McClain here. Who's callin'?"

The line buzzed softly. "Good morning...Pasadena."

Lance gawked. The phone slipped down a little, but he managed to catch it with the flat, pale inside of his forearm.

"Hello? Pasadena?...Lance?"

"What the fuck," Lance said, having finally found his voice, though the other parts of good conversation-making continued to elude him, because what the actual fuck was his life. "Kitty?"

"Yeah." That familiar baritone curled almost affectionately around the word. "Sorry, it's been a while."

"Kitty," Lance said, quietly at first but ramping up to his maximum volume, "it has not been a while. It has been a REALLY FUCKING LONG TIME."

"Um," Kitty said. "Oops?"

"Do you have a couch?" he asked, his voice cracking with how livid he was.

"Kind of? Why?"

"Because," Lance took a deep breath, "you better be sleeping on that thing tonight, mister, because I am SO FUCKING MAD AT YOU."

"I always sleep on the couch, though," Kitty said. "Well, actually, I think it's a bench. But it's couch-like."

"That is SO NOT THE POINT." Lance paused. "Wait, you always...? Why?"

"Don't have a bed."

"I swear to God," Lance said, flatly, "when your parents made you, they ran out of sugar and decided to put in raw FDA-certified organic disappointment instead."

"Well, to be fair," Kitty said cautiously, with a kind of well-worn bitterness, "it's less like they ran out of sugar and more like...they never really had any to give me?"

"Oh, so you're pulling the tragic backstory card?" Lance snorted.

"...what?"

"Is it a good tragic backstory, at least?" Lance leaned back. "Did somebody die in it? Is that why you can't deal with people? Because people die?"

Kitty sucked in a sharp, surprised breath.

"Never mind," Lance drawled, "it doesn't really matter, you're a grown ass adult and you can choose whether or not to be an asshole."

Kitty sucked in another breath. "...I'm not sure that  _I_  should be considered the asshole in this conversation," he said.

"We can both be assholes," Lance said. "We can be assholes together."

Kitty laughed, short and sharp and helpless. The sound of it seemed to surprise him. "I've never met anyone like you before - "

"We technically haven't met," Lance pointed out.

"Let me finish. I've never met anyone like you before, and I hope I never do again."

"We still technically haven't met."

"Do you want to?"

Lance laughed. "...do  _you_?"

"A little. You?"

"A little," he mimicked. "Just to see if you look like how I imagine you."

"...and how do you imagine me?"

"A douchebag who tries to rock the casually messy look but ends up looking like an actual mess," Lance chirped. "No offense!"

"None taken? I think?"

"But anyways. It's probably not going to happen. What if you're a serial killer? My mama would kill me."

"I'm not a serial killer."

"That's exactly what a serial killer would say."

"...Right."

They were both quiet for a moment. Lance used the time to process. It was a lot to process, okay. He didn't exactly wake up expecting today to be the day. He still wasn't sure he wasn't dreaming, not with the way he'd been dreaming lately.

Kitty broke the silence first. "You're not going to ask why I haven't called?"

Lance scoffed. "Do you want me to ask?"

"I don't know. It's not that I want you to ask...I just want you to  _want_  to ask, I guess."

"I do wanna ask. But if you're not going to answer, then what's the point?"

"How do you know that I won't answer?" Kitty sounded almost painfully earnest. It made Lance's insides churn a bit with misplaced guilt.

"...Don't be stupid, Kitty," Lance said, very quietly.

"...just ask, idiot."

Lance closed his eyes. This was fine. Everything was fine. "Why haven't you called, Kitty?"

"I was helping somebody move." Every word was measured, but not particularly calculated.

Lance's eyes snapped open. "Yeah? Anybody I would know?"

"I mean...sorta?" Kitty hedged, with an audible shrug.

Lance bit his lip to keep from laughing. "And...are you done? Moving?"

"Yeah."

"Okay." Lance took a deep breath and let it out again. "Are you going to call again tomorrow?"

"Probably not." After a moment, he muttered, "I might not call for a while." After another moment, he added, "I should probably go now, actually."

"Okay," Lance said, not even bothering to disguise his amusement. "I'm gonna go talk to Hunk now. If that's okay with you?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. Okay." He took another deep breath. "Okay."

"...you probably have to hang up to do that, you know."

"Shut up, Kitty." He hung up before Kitty could respond, and took a second to smack the helpless grin off his face. God, he hoped that Kitty didn't moonlight as a spy, because he'd be absolutely terrible at it.

Against all odds, everything was fine.

* * *

"You're kidding," Hunk said, once the post-show-tackle-hug dust settled.

"Nope."

"Oh my god."

"I know right?"

"Are you sure he meant Pidge, though?"

Lance shrugged.

"That's not an answer, Lance," Hunk said fretfully.

"S'the best I got."

"But that's not an  _answer_ ," he said plaintively.

Lance groaned. "What, you want me to get it in writing and notarized?"

" _YES._ "

"That's not happening, dude," Lance said, gently, because sometimes he couldn't tell when Hunk was actually riled up and when he was only on the edge of riled up.

"But that doesn't mean I don't want it!"

Lance gave him a considering look. "...Well, okay. As long as you're aware of your own unreasonableness, I guess."

Hunk rolled his eyes at him. " _I_  wasn't the one yelling into the phone for fifteen minutes."

"It would've been longer, but he derailed me."

"A miracle worthy of benediction."

"You don't understand," Lance said flatly. "He sleeps on a couch every night. Because he doesn't  _own a bed._ "

Hunk stared back at him. "What."

"I know."

"How does he live."

"Clearly, he  _doesn't_."

Hunk looked at the window and shook his head at it, like he could push the force of his disappointment all the way to Kitty, wherever he was.

Wherever...he...was...

Lance sat up so quickly he almost fell over. " _HUNK_ ," he half-shouted.

"WHAT," Hunk half-shouted back, reflexively.

"You know where he is! Or you can find out, I guess."

" _WHAT._ "

"He CALLED! With a PHONE NUMBER!"

They stared at each other, wordless, for a moment. Then they scrambled over to the computer and Hunk click-clacked his way through the log while Lance fidgeted at his back.

"Got it!" Hunk said, with the glow of discovery upon his face.

"Where," Lance half-shouted, leaning so far over Hunk's shoulder that they both nearly fell over.

"I mean that I got the  _number,_ " Hunk said, yelping. "Jesus, Lance. You were watching me. You were watching what I was doing. You saw me find the number. That's literally all I did, and you saw me do it!"

"Sorry," he said, chagrined. He made a zipping motion with his mouth, and settled back to watch Hunk pore over his search results and fiddle with the filters.

When Hunk finally  _got it_  got it, his enthusiasm didn't flag one bit. "Public telephone," he reported, squinting at the little map. "Five miles east."

"Where is it?" Lance overreached dangerously again. "Where?"

Hunk blinked slowly at his computer screen. "In a...Denny's? Is that Denny's? Yeah, that's a Denny's."

"A Denny's," Lance parroted. Then, despairingly, he repeated, "A  _Denny's_?"

Hunk frowned at him. "What's wrong with Denny's? They make decent eggs."

"Hunk, no." Lance pressed his hands to his face. "It's a Denny's. They're open 24/7."

Hunk continued to frown at him.

"Hunk," Lance said, in a voice like he was dying, "Kitty doesn't have a bed to sleep in. He sleeps on," and here he gave a deep shudder, " _a couch-like bench_."

He could tell the moment Hunk understood, because suddenly he was being squished, hard. "Oh my god," Hunk said, quietly horrified. "Figures you would pick the one dude who makes worse life decisions than you do."

Lance literally couldn't think of a single word of defense to say to that.  _He_  was the one who had wanted Kitty to call, after all.

He couldn't even manage the easy, simple, true statement of  _he's not my radio boyfriend._

* * *

"You know, he really is, though," Hunk mumbled into his pillow later that night, apropos of nothing, as he settled into the other side of Lance's queen size bed. 

Lance blinked sleepily at him. "Who is what?"

"Your - " Hunk yawned, "your - you know."

Lance groaned softly, too tired to even argue. "Go to sleep, Hunk."

"Kay."

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Kay."

"He's not."

"Not arguing," Hunk said, smiling.

Lance grumbled. "He lives in a Denny's."

"You don't know that," he said, even though he had been just as convinced as Lance was, not even one hour ago. 

"He's too much of a disappointment not to. Occam's razor."

Hunk snorted. "Still your radio boyfriend." Pause. "He called."

That, Lance had to acknowledge, was true. Still. "I'm not going to live in sin at a Denny's. I have standards."

Hunk turned to look at him. Then he laughed so hard that he rolled off the bed.

Lance rolled over just so that he could glare at Hunk's shaking, rolling body on the floor. Then he scooped up all the blankets and piled them over himself, huffing. 

Hunk's laughter did eventually peter out, but it took a solid five minutes, and he gave Lance whiplash immediately after with a soft, speculative murmur: "You got mad at him."

"Yeah," he said, "like you couldn't imagine."

Hunk's responding snort told him that yes, in fact, he could imagine, having witnessed the whole thing. But his voice stayed calm, steady, thoughtful. "I mean, you got  _mad_."

After a moment, his eyes jolted wide open, because it was true, he'd gotten so, so mad, and it had been _easy_. "I did."

They were silent for a long time, after that. 

Maybe it had been a bit premature to say that  _everything_ was fine. 

**Author's Note:**

> This continues to get longer and longer, which is...not uncommon for me, sadly. 
> 
> Now posted on tumblr too - https://yarrie-writes.tumblr.com/post/160427875183/thisness


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